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SONGS OF SUMMER 



. BY 
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD 



" When I walk by myself alone 
It doth me good my songs to render." 

Old Play. 



BOSTON 
TICItNOR AND FIELDS 

M DCCC LVII 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 

Richard H. Stoddard, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of 

Massachusetts. 



Riverside, Cambridge, 
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



ro GEORGE H. BOKER. 



Not mine the tragic foefs art. 
His empire of the human heart : 
That ijoorld is shut from me. 
But you possess the key. 

I see you in your 'wide domain. 
Surrounded by a stately train. 

That linked, and died of yore : 
But nonx) they die no more 1 

The Moor Calaynos : Anne Boleyn ; 

The Guzman and the cruel queen ; 
And that unhappy Pair 
That float in HelVs murk air ! 

Anon your bitter Fool appears. 
Masking in mirth his cynic sneers ; 
We hear his bells, and smile. 
But long to mjeep the 'while. 



IV DEDICATION. 

A narrouoer range to me belongs^ 
A little land of summer songs, 
A realm of thought apart 
From all that ivrings the heart. 

To 'Win you to my small estate. 
Old friend, I greet you at the gate. 
And from its fairest boiuer 
Bring you this simple fl.o'wer. 



CONTENTS. 

I. 

Pagk 

" There are gains for all our losses." 5 

" Thy father is a king, my child." 6 

"A few frail summers had touched thee." 7 

The Song of the Syrens 8 

" Range yourselves, my merry men." 9 

The Sea 10 

The Shadow of the Hand 11 

The Speech of Love 12 

" You may drink to your leman in gold." 13 

The Sea 14 

Birds 15 

The Lost Lamb 16 

The Sea 17 

" The sky is a drinking cup." 18 

On the Pier 19 

" Spring, they tell me, comes in bloom." 20 

" The gray old Earth goes on." 21 

*' There is no sin to hearts that love." 22 

The King muses 24 

The Divan 25 

The Tress of Brown Hair to the Poet 26 

" The sky is thick upon the sea." 27 



VI CONTENTS. 

Page 

The Falcon : 28 

Day and Night 29 

The Dead 3° 

The Sea 31 

" Many's the time I've sighed for summer." 32 

The Gipsy Toad 33 

A Serenade 34 

" The house is dark and dreary." 35 

" The Phantom that walks in the sun." 36 

Were I a Bird 37 

The Night before the Bridal 39 

" Dim grows the sky and dusk the air." 40 

Summer and Autumn 41 

The Helmet 42 

Roses and Thorns 43 

" Beneath the heavy curtains." 44 

" Rattle the window, winds ! " 45 

The Veiled Statue 46 

Dead Leaves 48 

" Poems of the Orient. " • 49 

The Demon of Music 50 

The Sea 51 

" My only dreams are waking dreams." 52 

At Rest 53 

" Wrecks of clouds of a sombre gray." 54 

" No ! I will not leave you, Madam." 55 

The Shadow ^6 

November ^y 

The First Snow ^8 

" Buried in Songs that never yet were sung." 60 



CONTENTS. VII 



PAGE 
II. 



Carmen Natura Triumphale 6^ 

Invocation to Sleep 80 

The Stork and the Ruby 83 

" We are bent with age and cares." 87 

Pain in A utumn 89 

The Abdication of Noman, the Elder 92 

The Moon on the Spire 103 

The Grave of Robin Hood 105 

The Children's Prayer 112 

Stanzas 116 

" By the margent of the sea." 118 

Choric Hymn 122 

The Fisher and Charon 126 

Great and Small - 140 

The Poplar 143 

Miserrimus 145 

The Old Mill 147 

The Squire of Low Degree 149 

Imogen 160 

The Flamingo 1 64 

The Serenade of Ma-Han-Shan 166 

The Sledge at the Gate 168 

The Grape Gatherer 170 

Sicilian Pastoral 172 

*' We parted in the streets of Ispahan." 174 

The Search for Persephone 175 

The Burden of Unrest 193 

" I lay his pi6lure on my knee." 224 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



" Songs are like fainted ivindoiv fanes. 
In darkness njorap the church remains^ 
If from the market place ive njieiv it ; 
Thus sees the ignoramus through it. 
No 'wonder that he deems it tame^ 
And all his life ''tivill be the safne. 

" But let us noiD inside repair^ 

And greet the holy chapel there : 

At once the "whole seems clear and bright^ 

Each ornament is bathed in light. 

And fraught -ivith meaning to the sight. 

God''s children! thus your fortune prize. 

Be edified, and feaft your eyes^''"' 

Goethe. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 

There are gains for all our losses, 

There are balms for all our pain : 
But when youth, the dream, departs, 
It takes something from our hearts, 
And it never comes again. 

We are flronger, and are better. 

Under manhood*s fterner reign : 
Still we feel that something sweet 
Followed youth,, with flying feet. 
And will never come again. 

Something beautiful is vanifhed. 

And we sigh for it in vain : 
We behold it everywhere. 
On the earth, and in the air, 
But it never comes again ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



[britainy.] 

Thy father is a King, my child, 

And thou a Prince by birth ; 
But he has banifhed us from court 

To roam about the earth : 
But let him be that wrongeth thee, 
For all the holy angels see ; 

Said patient pale Cuftance. 
[" Peace^ little son^ I will do thee no harm.^'' 
But ftill the babe lay weeping on her arm.^ 

From door to door we beg our bread, 

From day to day we pine, 
While he doth at his banquet sit. 

And drain the cups of wine : 
But let him be, oh let him be, 
For God will care for you and me ; 

Said patient pale Cuftance. 
[" Peace^ little son^ I will do thee no harm.'''' 
But ftill the babe lay weeping on her arm.'\ 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



[ANTiqUE.] 

A FEW frail summers had touched thee. 

As they touch the fruit ; 
Not so bright as thy hair the sunfhine, 

Not so sweet as thy voice the lute : 
Hufhed the voice, fliorn the hair ; all is over 

An urn of white afhes remains ; 
Nothing else, save the tears in our eyes, 

And our bittereft, bittereft pains. 

We garland the urn with white roses, 
Burn incense and gums on the fhrine. 

Play old tunes with the saddeft of closes. 
Dear tunes that were thine ! 

But in vain, all in vain. 

Thou art gone — we remain ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE SONG OF THE SYRENS. 

Long have you bufFeted the winds. 

And urged the weary oar : 
Now you reach our little isle 
Furl your sail, and reft awhile. 

On the happy fhore. 

What is here that you ihould fear ? 
What is there so deadly here ? 
A quiet island in the sea. 

Grass-fringed, and fhadowed deep with palms 

Winds that winnow summer balms : 
Flowers in each vale, and fruits on every tree ! 
We weave flow dances in the fkade. 

With lifted arms and floating hair : 
Or, when the golden noon is come. 
Lift the wild-bee's drowsy hum. 

Or watch the inserts in the air : 

Or kiss each other on the lips. 
And softly swoon away in Sleep's divine eclipse ! 

What is there to fear in this ? 

Where*s the danger of a kiss ? 

But, if dangerous it be. 
It is to maids like us, not to men like thee ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



[ITALY.] 

Range yourselves my merry men. 
And wake your sweeteft numbers ; 

My lady will forgive the voice 
That melts her silent {lumbers : 

For ladies liften with delight 

To music in the summer night. 

Run your hands across the ftrings. 
Like the wind through vernal rains. 

Softly : not of lovers' fears, 

Nor their idle rain of tears — 
Sing serener ftrains : 

Sing the joy, the happy smart. 

In a little maiden's heart, 

That finds in dreams her lover dear, 

And wakes — to find him near ! 



10 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE SEA. 

[storm.] 

Through the night, through the night, 

In the saddeft unreft. 
Wrapt in white, all in white, 

With her babe on her breaft, 
Walks the mother so pale. 
Staring out on the gale. 

Through the night ! 

Through the night, through the night, 
Where the sea lifts the wreck. 

Land in sight, close in sight, 
On the surf-flooded deck. 

Stands the father so brave. 

Driving on to his grave. 
Through the night ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. II 



THE SHADOW OF THE HAND. 

[ITALY.] 

You were very charming, Madam, 

In your silks and satins fine ; 
And you made your lovers drunken. 

But it was not with your wine ! 
There were court-gallants in dozens. 

There were princes of the land. 
And they would have perifhed for you, 

As they knelt and kissed your hand ; 

For they saw no Jiain upon it^ 

It was such a snowy hand! 

But for me — I knew you better. 

And, while you were flaunting there, 

I remembered some one lying 

With the blood on his white hair! 

He was pleading for you. Madam, 
Where the shriven spirits ftand : 

But the Book of Life was darkened 
By the Shadow of a Hand ! 
It was tracing your perdition^ 
For the blood upon your hand ! 



12 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE SPEECH OF LOVE. 

You afk me, love, to sing of you. 
Dear heart I bat what and why ? 
Songs are but sweet and fkilful words, 
That tinkle unto certain chords. 
And are but born to die. 

Words can not fhow my burning love, 

My passion's secret fire : 
I try to speak, and make it plain. 
About my pleasure, and my pain. 

But song and-speech expire. 

There is more eloquence in looks. 

More poesy in sighs^ 
Than ever yet in speech was framed. 
Or any song of poet famed. 

Though lit at ladies' eyes. 

Then bid me sing of love no more. 

But let me silent be ; 
For silence is the speech of love. 
The music of the spheres above. 

That suits a soul like thee. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 1 3 



You may drink to your leman in gold, 
In a great golden goblet of wine ; 

She's as ripe as the wine, and as bold 

As the glare of the gold : 

But this little lady of mine — 
I will not profane her in wine. 

I go where the garden so ftill is, 
(The moon raining through,) 

To pluck the white bowls of the lilies. 
And drink her in dew! • 




14 SONGS OF SUMMER, 



THE SEA. 

[the lover.] 

You {looped and picked a wreathed shell, 

Beside the shining sea : 
" This little shell, when I am gone, 

Will whisper ftill of me." 
I kissed your hands, upon the sands. 

For you were kind to me ! 

I hold the shell againft my ear, 

Antl hear its hollow roar : 
It speaks to me about the sea. 

But speaks of you no more. 
I pace the sands, and wring my hands. 

For you are kind no more ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I5 



BIRDS. 

Birds are singing round my window, 
Tunes the sweeteft ever heard, 

And I hang my cage there daily. 
But I never catch a bird. 

So with thoughts my brain is peopled. 
And they sing there all day long : 

But they will not fold their pinions 
In the little cage of song ! 



]6 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE LOST LAMB, 

[tartary.] 

The little Tartar maiden 

That tends my mafter's sheep 

She makes a lamb her pillow, 
When she lies down to fleep. 

She parts her gray tent-curtains 
Before the morn is seen, 

And drives our flocks together, 
To paftures fresh and green. 

My heart goes with the maiden, 
For when I wake I find 

No heart within my bosom, 
No happy peace of mind. 

I track the loft lamb's footfteps, 
And find it faft afleep, 

Beside the little maiden 

Among my mafter's sheep. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 1 7 



THE SEA. 

[the wife.] 

I PACE the sands from morn till night, 
But the sail I seek is never in sight : 
Will it ever come ? fhall I ever see 
The man so dear to my babe and me ? 

When the (ky is bright, and the waves are calm, 
And the warm wind flows like a sea of balm, 
" He lives," I think j " He comes ! " I say : 
But he comes not, though I watch all day. 

sun ! my heart goes down with thee ! 
For who can bear the night, and the sea ? 
The lonely fky and the moaning waves — 
They make us think of our sailors' graves ! 

1 pace and pace the desolate fhore. 

But he comes no more, he comes no more : 
He never will come to my babe and me. 
He is loft in the deep and cruel sea ! 
2 



l8 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



The fky is a drinking cup, 
That was overturned of old, 

And it pours in the eyes of men 
Its wine of airy gold ! 

We drink that wine all day. 
Till the laft drop is drained up, 

And are lighted off to bed 
By the jewels in the cup ! 




SONGS OF SUMMER. IQ 



ON THE PIER. 

Down at the end of the long dark ftreet, 

Years, years ago, 
I sat with my sweetheart on the pier, 

Watching the river flow. 

The moon was climbing the fky that night, 
White as the winter's snow : 

We kissed in its light, and swore to be true- 
But that was years ago ! 

Once more I walk in the dark old ftreet. 

Wearily to and fro : 
But I sit no more on the desolate pier 

Watching the river flow. 



20 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



Spring, they tell me, comes in bloom, 

Flowers already flar the lea : 
But thou art lying in thy tomb, 
And there is no Spring for me. 
Skies are gay 
Day after day. 
And the snow-drifts melt away : 
But there is no Spring for me, 
Perdita. 

Over thee the willows wave. 

And the waning moon doth fhine : 
But thou art happy in thy grave. 
And I would I were in mine. 
Heart and brain 
Are racked with pain, 
For I seek thy grave again : 
But I soon fhall reft in mine, 
Perdita ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 21 



The gray old Earth goes on 

At its ancient pace, 
Lifting its thunder-voice 
In the choir of space ; 
And the years as they go 
Are singing flow. 
Solemn dirges, full of wo ! 

Tyrants sit upon their thrones. 

And will not hear the people's moans. 

Nor hear their clanking chains : 
Or, if they do, they add thereto. 

And mock, not ease their pains. 

But little liberty remains. 
There is but little room for thee. 
In this wide world, O Liberty ! 
But where thy foot has once been set 

Thou wilt remain, though oft unseen 



22 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

And grow like thought, and move like wind, 
Upon the troubled sea of Mind, 

No longer now serene. 
Thy life and ftrength thou doft retain. 
Despite the cell, the rack, the pain, 
And all the battles won in vain ! 
And even now thou see'fl: the hour 
That lays in duft the thrones of Power : 
When man fhall once again be free. 
And Earth renewed, and young like thee, 
O Liberty ! O Liberty ! 




SONGS OF SUMMER. 23 



There is no sin to hearts that love, 

Whatever men may say ; 
For they are lifted far above 

The laws of lesser clay. 

They are unto themselves a law, 

No other law can bind : 
No other wakes a moment's awe, 

For meaner men designed. 

Then tell me not 'tis love that parts, 
Nor fear the powers above ; 

For all the sins of loving hearts 
Are wafhed away by love ! 



24 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE KING MUSES. 

Nay, keep your seats, I pray ; let no one ftir : 
The banquet's juft begun. Slaves, fill their cups, 
And ftand behind their chairs with flafks of wine. 
For me, my lords, I mean to walk awhile. 
And think my thoughts. Come oiF, my kingly crown ! 
You chafe my temples with your golden round, 
And turn my hair to silver : soh, lie there. 
And now I doff my robe. Drink, gentlemen. 
Good Fool, put on this weary robe and crown. 
And play the King. Had I a wreath of flowers, 
Such as the country maids do wear in spring, 
Frefh wild flowers, cool with dew, Pd crown myself. 
But why pluck flowers to bind a few gray hairs ? 
Before the year is out a whited fkull 
Will be the lordlieft thing that's left of me. 
Away with all this fhow ! this well-piled board. 
These glittering lamps, music, and song and wine ! 
Bring me a robe of sackcloth, one of you. 
Another ftrew some afhes on the ground. 
When you have finifhed feafting, gentlemen. 
You'll find me with the leper at my gates. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 25 



THE DIVAN. 

[PERSIA.] 
I. 

A LITTLE maid of Aftrakan, 

An idol on a silk divan j 

She sits so ftill, and never speaks, 

She holds a cup of mine ; 
'Tis full of wine, and on her cheeks 

Are ftains and smears of wine ! 

II. 

Thou little girl of Aftrakan, 
I join thee on the silk divan : 
There is no need to seek the land, 

The rich bazaars where rubies fhine j 
For mines are in that little hand. 

And on those little cheeks of thine ! 



26 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE TRESS OF BROWN HAIR TO THE POET. 

Here I lie, a tress of hair, 
Kissed by every wandering air, 
Wiftiing you would kiss me too : 
Why don't you, oftener than you do ? 
Through my ringlets ran her fingers, 

Whom you love so fond and true ; 
And their sweetness lingers, lingers 

In the ringlets ftill for you. 

Only kiss them once, and see 
What love lies embalmed in me ! 
Kiss me now, and it fhall seem 
As if you kissed her, in a dream ; 
Nay ! it fhall not seem, but be : 
You fhall kiss her, sir, and fhe — 
She fhall fland before you there. 
Pale and fair. 
By only kissing me, a little tress of hair ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 2/ 



*m*m* 



The fky is thick upon the sea. 
The sea is sown with rain, 

And in the passing gufts we hear 
The clanging of the crane. 

The cranes are flying to the south ; 

We cut the northern foam : 
The dreary land they leave behind 

Muft be our future home. 

Its barren fhores are long and dark. 
And gray its autumn fky ; 

But better these, than this gray sea. 
If but to land — and die ! ^ 



28 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE FALCON. 

In-doors in a summer day, like this, 
I pine with a fancied wrong ; 

But out in the sunihine, out in the wind, 
My soul is a falcon ftrong. 

The brave bright sun, so merry and old — 
He lends his flrength to my wings, 

And I soar till I see the golden gate, 
Where the lark at morning sings. 

But let my lady summon me back, 

I come, as a falcon fhould. 
Out of the sunfhine, out of the wind. 

And yield my eyes to the hood ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 29 



DAY AND NIGHT. 

Day is the Child of Time, 
And Day muft cease to be : 

But Night is without a sire, 

And can not expire, 
One with Eternity. 

Day and the angel Life 

Circle the worlds of air, 
With a speed that looks not back ; 
For Night is on their track, 

Clutching their golden hair ! 

She comes, fhe comes again. 

In her dark and pitiless flight ; 
The baby Sleep on her arm reclined. 
The fkeleton Death behind — 

The Shadow that haunts the night 



30 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE DEAD. 

I THINK about the dead by day, 

I dream of them at night : 
They seem to ftand beside my chair, 
Clad in the clothes they used to wear, 

And by my bed in white. 

The common-places of their lives. 

The lighteft words they said. 
Revive in me, and give me pain. 
And make me wifh them back again. 

Or wifli that I were dead. 

I would be kinder to them now, 

Were they alive once more ; 
Would kiss their cheeks, and kiss their hair. 
And love them, like the angels there. 

Upon the silent fhore. 

I know not where ye are, ye dead ! 

My dead, so dear to me ! 
In your low graves, in heaven, or hell : 
But where you dwell I long to dwell. 

With you I pine to be ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 31 



THE SEA. 

[maid.] 

By the rolling waves I roam, 

And look along the sea. 
And dream of the day, and the gleaming sail 

That bore my love from me. 

His bark now sails the Indian seas. 

Far down in the tropic zone : 
But his thoughts, like swallows, fly to me, 

By the northern waves alone. 

Nor will he delay, when winds are fair 

To waft him back to me : 
But hafte, my love! or my grave will be made 

By the sad and moaning sea ! 



32 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



Many's the time I've sighed for summer, 

Many's the summer I've known ; 
But to-day I cling to the flying spring, 

And fear to have it flown. 
Not that May is gay. 
For the fky is cold and gray. 

And a fhadow creeps on the day : 
But the laden summer will give me, 

What it never gave before ; 
Or take from me what a thousand 

Summers can give no more ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 33 



THE GIPSY TOAD. 

[BOHEMIA.] 

Across the haunted moor I went, 
Wrapt in the glooms of discontent : 
The weeds were thick, the grass was sere, 
Because the gipsy's toad was near. 

It cowered beside the marftiy road ; 
Its eye with devilifh cunning glowed : 
I ftamped, and ftamped it in the mud, 
Until my feet were red with blood. 

Then on I went with hurried tramp. 
Until I reached the gipsy camp : 
Great was the ftir and sorrow there, 
And the old Queen tore her ragged hair ! 

" What is the matter, old Mother Crawl ? " 
She answered me not, but raised her Ihawl : 
A trampled body, a mangled head — 
Jesu ! the gipsy's child was dead ! 

3 



34 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



A SERENADE. 

[FRANCE.] 

There's a door in your chamber, lady mine, 

I, the King, have the key : 
There's a walk in my garden's deepeft fhade. 

For you, Sweet, and me. 

We are royal and diftant by day, 

When the world is in sight : 
But at night we have hearts, and we love, 

And are happy at night. 

The lamps have gone out, lady mine. 

All is ftill : let us rise : 
I can track you by the beat of your heart, 

And the light of your eyes. 

Through the dufk of the lindens we'll glide. 

To that alley of ours : 
And kiss in the light of the moon. 

And the odor of flowers. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 35 



The house is dark and dreary, 

And my heart Is full of gloom ; 
But out of doors, in the blessed air, 
The sun is warm, the Iky is fair, 
And the flowers are ftill in bloom. 

A moment ago in the garden 

I scattered the fhining dew : 
The wind was soft in the swaying trees, 
The morning-glories were full of bees. 
And ftraight in my face they flew ! 

Yet I left them unmolefted, 

Draining their honey-wine. 
And entered the weary house again, 
To sit, as now, by a bed of pain, 

With a fevered hand in mine. 



36 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



[antique.] 

The phantom that walks in the sun, 
The terror that creeps In the air, 

Has entered the Garden of Youth, 
And vainly we look for thee there : 
Thy spirit has vanifhed, but where ? 

I queftion the wind of the summer. 
That blows o'er the land and the sea ; 

It gives me a moan for my moan. 
But no tidings of thee : 

Nor answer the ftars in the fkies. 

Pining ftill for the light of thine eyes ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 3/ 



WERE I A BIRD. 

Were I a little winged bird, 

As I desire to be, 
I would not live another day 
In this dark city, but away 

To lands beyond the sea. 

I'd build my nefl In some old wood. 

From other nefts apart : 
No wing among the boughs would be 
So swift as mine, no song so free. 

So pure no human heart. 

The sunhght dripping through the leaves 

The merry leaves at play : 
The rain drops pattering on the roof: 
The queenly moon : the pearly woof 

That paves her nightly way : 



38 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

This, and the bliss that music gives. 

The rarefl: ever heard ; 
From every bird a song divine, 
To answer mine — all would be mine. 

Were I a happy bird. 

But now — Pm very like a bird. 

Above this ledger's page : 
And these dry mafts are woods along 
The sounding sea, and this a song : 
The city is my cage ! 




SONGS OF SUMMER. 39 



THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BRIDAL. 

The bridal flower you gave me, 
The rose so pure and white — 

I press it to my Hps, dear, 
With tears of soft delight. 

Its odor is so heavy '' 

It makes me faint and pine : 

It is thy kiss that freights it, 

That sweet, sweet love of thine ! 

To-morrow thou wilt give me. 
For a spell of joy and power. 

The hand that gave the rose-bud. 
And thy heart, a richer flower. 

Then this may fade, and wither. 

No longer kissed by me. 
For these, my burning kisses. 

Will then be ihowered on thee ! 



40 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



Dim grows the fky, and dufk the air, 
And fliadows settle everywhere, 
Save when the embers ftreak the wall 
With flames, that soon in darkness fall. 

Pensive I sit, relapsing fait 
Into the dead, the silent Paft : 
The Paft returns, the dead are here ; 
Was that a whisper in my ear ? 

No ! dear one, no ! I did not sigh ; 
Nor does a tear bedim mine eye : 
'Twas the officious light you brought, 
And something alien to my thought. 
But even if my tears do flow, 
I weep for pleasure, not for wo : 
I weep — because I love you so ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 4I 



SUMMER AND AUTUMN. 

The hot mid-summer, the bright mid-summer 

Reigns in its glory now : 
The earth is scorched with a golden fire, 
There are berries, dead-ripe, on every brier. 

And fruits on every bough. 

But the autumn days, so sober and calm. 

Steeped in a dreamy haze ; 
When the uplands all with harvefts fhine, 
And we drink the wind hke a fine cool wine — 

Ah ! those are the beft of days ! 



42 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE HELMET. 

[GERMANY.] 

Where the ftandards waved the thickeft. 

And the tide of battle rolled, 
Furiously he charged the foemen, 

On his snow-white fteed so bold ; 
But he wore no guarding helmet, 

Only his long hair of gold ! 

" Turn, and fly ! thou rafh young warrior, 

Or this iron helmet wear." 
" Nay ! but I am armed already, 

In the brightness of my hair ; 
For my mother kissed its tresses, 

With the holy lips of prayer ! " 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 43 



ROSES AND THORNS. 

The young child Jesus had a garden, 

Full of roses, rare and red : 
And thrice a day he watered them, 

To make a garland for his head. 

When they were full-blown in the garden, 
He called the Jewifti children there. 

And each did pluck himself a rose, 
Until they ftripped the garden bare. 

"And now how will you make your garland ? 

For not a rose your path adorns." 
" But you forget," he answered them, 

" That you have left me ftill the thorns." 

They took the thorns, and made a garland. 
And placed it on his fhining head ; 

And where the roses fliould have fhone 
Were little drops of blood inftead ! 



44 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



Beneath the heavy curtains, 
My face agalnft the pane, 

I peer into the darkness. 
And scan the night in vain. 

The vine o'erruns the lattice. 
And lies along its roof, 

So thick with leaves and clufters 
It keeps the moon aloof. 

By yonder pear-tree splintered 
The feeble radiance falls. 

But fails to pierce the branches. 
Or touch the sombre walls. 

No moon, no ftarlight gleaming. 
The dark encircles me ; 

And, what is more annoying. 
My neighbor cannot see. 

She ftands beneath her curtains, 
Her face againft the pane. 

Nor knows that I am watching 
For her to-night again. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 45 



Rattle the window, Winds ! 

Rain, drip on the panes ! 
There are tears and sighs in our hearts and eyes. 

And a weary weight on our brains. 

The gray sea heaves and heaves. 

On the dreary flats of sand ; 
And the blafted limb of the churchyard yew — 

It fhakes like a ghoftly hand ! 

The dead are engulfed beneath it. 

Sunk in the grassy waves : 
But we have more dead in our hearts to-dav 

Than the Earth in all her graves ! 



46 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE VEILED STATUE. 

There's a ftatue in my chamber, 
Carved in other years for me. 

From the memory of a lady 
In a land beyond the sea. 

In its niche I keep it hidden 
By a veil from common eyes : 

But my ow^n behold it ever, 
And its fhade upon me lies. 

Through the day it ftands before me, 
And appalls my fhrinking sight. 

And at night it grows so awful 
That I cannot fleep for fright ! 

For when falls the ghoftly moonlight 
In the silence of the room, 

And my spirit faints within me 
As it hearkens for its doom — 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 47 

'Tis no more the woman's ftatue, 

But the woman's self I see, 
Pallid with her love and sorrow, 

And the death fhe died for me. 

And, so ftrange her spell upon me, 

As ftie bends above my bed. 
She becomes the wretched living, 

I the ftill more wretched dead! 




48 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



DEAD LEAVES. 

The day is dead, and in its grave, 

The flowers are fail afleep ; 
But in this solemn wood alone 

My nightly watch I keep : 
The night is dark, the dew descends, 
But dew and darkness are my friends. 

I flir the dead leaves under foot. 
And breathe the earthy smell 5 

It is the odor of decay, 
And yet I like it well : 

Give others day, and scented flowers, 

Give me dead leaves, and midnight hours ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 49 



"POEMS OF THE ORIENT." 

We read your little book of Orient lays, 

And half believe old superflitions true ; 

No Saxon like ourselves, an Arab, you, 

Stolen in your babyhood by Saxon fays. 

That you in fervid songs recall the blaze 

Of eaftern suns j behold the deep-blue fkies ; 

Lie under ruftling palms ; breathe winds of spice, 

And dream of veiled sultanas, is no praise. 

All this is native to you as the air ; 

You but regain the birthright loft of yore : 

The marvel is it now becomes our own. 

We wind the turban round our Frankifh hair. 

Spring on our fteeds, that paw the desert's floor, 

And take the sandy solitude alone ! 



.^ 



^0 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE DEMON OF MUSIC. 

There's a demon in Music, 

Whatever its tone ; 
He dwells in the crowd 

Of its voices alone : 
He moans when they laugh, 

He laughs when they moan ! 

This demon of Music 

Hath some how been crossed -, 
He longs for what is not. 

Or was, and is loft : 
That Life is a torture 

He knows to his coft ! 

demon of Music I 
I pity your pain ; 

1 have felt it myself, 

And fhall feel it again : 
'Tis the riddle of living, 
This living in vain ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 5 1 



THE SEA. 

[the lover.] 
Thou pallid fiflier maiden, 

That ftandeft by the fhore, 
Why doft thou watch the ocean, 

And hearken to its roar ? 

It is some Danifh. sailor. 

That sails the Spanifh main : 

Nor will thy roses redden 
Till he returns again. 

Thou simple fifher maiden ! 

He cares no more for thee : 
He fleeps with the mermaidens. 

The witches of the sea. 

Thou fhould'ft not watch the ocean, 

And hearken to its roar. 
When bridal bells are ringing 

In little kirks afhore. 

Go, dress thee for thy bridal ! 

A ftalwart man like me 
Is worth a thousand sailors. 

Whose bones are in the sea ! 



52 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



— @®^— 

My only dreams are waking dreams, 

The fancies of the day ; 
At night I lie upon my bed 
And reft as soundly as the dead. 

Who fleep the years away ! 

To some the doors of Sleep unclose. 

To me the gate of Death : 
I enter not the sunless land, 
But all night on the threfhold ftand. 
My life upon my breath ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 53 



AT REST, 



With folded hands the lady lies 

In flowing robes of white, 
A globed lamp beside her couch, 

A disc of tender light. 

With such a light above her head, 

A little year ago. 
She walked adown the fhadowy vale 

Where the blood-red roses grow ! 

A fhape or fhadow joined her there. 

To pluck the royal flower ; 
But flole the Hly from her breaft, 

Albeit her only dower. 

With that all went — her false love firft, 

And then her peace of heart : 
The hard world frowned ; her friends grew cold 

She hid in tears apart : 

And now fhe lies upon her couch, 

Amid the dying light. 
Nor wakes to hear the little voice 

That moans throughout the night ! 



54 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



Wrecks of clouds of a sombre gray, 
Like the ribbed remains of a maftodon, 

Were piled in masses along the weft, 

And a ftreak of red ftretched over the sun. 

I ftood on the deck of the ferry boat. 

As the summer evening deepened to night ; 

Where the tides of the river ran darkling paft, 
Through lengthening pillars of crinkled light. 

The vv^ind blew over the land and the waves 
With its salt sea-breath, and a spicy balm, 

And it seemed to cool my throbbing brain. 
And lend my spirit its gufty calm. 

The foreft of mafts, the dark-hulled fhlps. 
The twinkhng lights, and the sea of men — 

I read the riddle of each and all. 

And I knew their inner meaning then. 

For while the beautiful moon arose. 

And drifted the boat in her yellow beams. 

My soul went down the river of thought. 
That flows in the myftic land of dreams ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 55 



No ! I will not leave you, Madam, 
In the darkness and the rain ; 

'Tis for you to be so cruel. 
But for me, I pity pain. 

Be my silly love forgotten, 
I. forgive you your disdain. 

You have goodly halls and houses, 
And your loves of high degree ; 

I have nothing but my passion. 
You can never think of me j 

In your pride as far above me. 
As the moon above the sea. 

But, it seems, at laft you love me. 
If I read your thoughts aright. 

For behold! I fly your presence, 
And you follow in my flight, 

Till you find me by the lightnings, 
In the thunders of the night ! 



^6 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE SHADOW. 

There is but one great sorrow, 

All over the wide wide world ; 
But that in turn muft come to all — 
The Shadow that moves behind the pall, 

A flag that never is furled ! 

Till he in his marching crosses 

The threfhold of the door. 
Usurps a place in the inner room. 
Where he broods in the awful hufh and gloom. 

Till he goes, and comes no more — 

Save this there is no sorrow. 

Whatever we think we feel ; 
But when Death comes all's over : 
'Tis a blow that we never recover, 

A wound that never will heal ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER, 57 



NOVEMBER. 

The wild November comes at laft 

Beneath a veil of rain ; 
The night wind blows its folds aside. 

Her face is full of pain. 

The lateft of her race, fhe takes 
The Autumn's vacant throne : 

She has but one fhort moon to live, 
And fhe muft live alone. 

A barren realm of withered fields : 
Bleak woods of fallen leaves : 

The palefl: morns that ever dawned : 
The drearieft of eves : 

It is no wonder that fhe comes. 
Poor month ! with tears of pain : 

For what can one so hopeless do 
But weep, and weep again ! 



58 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE FIRST SNOW. 

To-day has been a pleasant day, 

Despite the cold and snow ; 
A sabbath ftillness filled the air, 
And pictures flumbered everywhere, 

Around, above, below. 

We woke at dawn, and saw the trees 

Before our windows white ; 
Their limbs were clad with snow, like bark, 
Save that the under sides were dark. 

Like bars againft the light. 

The fence was white around the house. 

The lamp before the door ; 
The porch was glazed with pearled fleet. 
Great drifts lay in the silent ftreet, 

The ftreet was seen no more ! 

Long trenches had been roughly dug, 

And giant footprints made ; 
But few were out ; the ftreets were bare : 
I saw but one pale wanderer there, 

And he was like a fhade ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 59 

I seemed to walk another world, 

Where all was ftill and bleft : 
The cloudless fky, the ftainless snows — 
It was a vision of repose, 

A dream of heavenly reft : 

A dream the holy night completes, 

For now the moon hath come, 
I ftand in heaven with folded wings, 
A free and happy soul that sings 

When all things else are dumb ! 






6o SONGS OF SUMMER, 



"BURIED IN SONGS THAT NEVER YET WERE 

SUNG." 

Could I arreft the flight of Time, 

Revive the years of yore, 
I would not afk one sorrow less. 

Or know one joy the more : 
It were enough to sing the songs 

I fhould have sung before. 

My days and years have silent been, 

For all that I have sung : 
Some dreamy rhymes have dropped from me. 

Some sad hath sorrow wrung ; 
But nothing great; and now, alas ! 

I am no longer young. 

I would recall my early dreams. 

But they are dead to me ; 
As well with laft year's withered buds 

Reclothe a this year's tree : 
It is not what I might have been. 

But what I yet may be. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 6l 



That thought alone avails me now. 
And all regrets are vain : 

They seem to bring a dreamy bliss. 
But bring a certain pain : 

To him who works, and only him. 
The Paft returns again. 




II. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 65 



CARMEN NATURt^ TRIUMPHALE. 

I. 

Musing In solitude the summer long, 

Musing beside this sea, beneath these fkies,. 
Whose cloudy calm upon my spirit lies. 
My spirit has been fed, my fainting heart made ftrong. 
No more content with sensuous sounds and sights. 
No more content with sensuous bread and wine, 
I feel a hunger and a thirft divine ; 
Forgetting all my dreams, and soft delights. 
My days of indolence, my sweet voluptuous nights ! 
My wild voluptuous nights are flown ; 
I cannot live by bread alone. 
For bread is naught ; 
I live by thought. 
Giving myself to Nature, 
A many-minded creature. 
Whom sovereign Nature loves, a sovereign Child of 
Nature ! 

II. 
There was a time, a wafted time in youth, 
Before my idle soul unfurled her wings, 

5 



66 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

When I looked round upon all outward things 
As truths, and not the outward fhows of Truth : 
The forms and powers of Nature were my ilaves ; 
A flower was then a simple flower to me, 
A tree a tree, 
And the sea nothing, save awafte of waves. 
Now, these are nothing of themselves alone ; 
A fhining mantle over them is thrown : 
Or years have raised the mantle of my youth. 
Whereby I see the world in all its naked truth. 

III. 
The outward world of sound and sight, 
The fhows of day, the pomps of night. 

Are other than they seem j 
The clouds around a hidden ftar. 

The fleep around a dream. 
The airs that fan the globe 
Wrap it with Being, like a robe ; 
And the clouds waft it over land and sea. 
Like. Ages floating through Eternity! 
It lives in duft, and grass, and flowers. 
And in the trees. 
And in the springs, and flreams, and seas. 
And in the mountains. Earth's Titanic Powers j 
And in Earth's central deeps it dwells the same j 
A heart of fire, it beats in fire and flame ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 67 

Throughout the Universe there is no spot 

Where Life is not : 
Nowhere is any death : Death does but seem ; 

A dream within the dream : 
Nothing but Life, and Change, its heart and cause, 
The adamantine base of crumbling laws. 
The flowers may fade away, the woods may fall, 

The sea may wafte the land, the land the sea, 
And men may feed the worms beneath the pall, 

And Time may vanifh in Eternity ; 
Still, ocean-like, the tides of Being lie. 

Filled from exhauftless urns ; 

The flame of Life ftill burns. 

And God ftill sits on high. 
And watches Earth below, with His unfleeping eye ! 

IV. 

Why fliould I read what man has penned. 
His speculations without end. 
When here the Book of Nature lies. 
Open to all her children's eyes. 
No wire-drawn, narrow comments there, 
Nor any warrant for despair ? 
I tell you. Nay ! It cannot be, 
Creation is enough for me : 

I will not look 

On creed or book. 



68 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Or aught beside the earth and fkies ; 
There is no need 
Of book, or creed, 
To teach a man, and make him good and wise ; 
We all are wise and good, 
If truly underftood ; 
Within ourselves the source of truth and virtue lies. 
There is no need of temples built with hands. 
To caft their ihadows over subje6t lands ; 
No need of ftoled priefts, and chanting friars. 
Censers, and incense smoke, and altar fires ; 
No need of crucifix and beads ; 

No need of sacred bread and wine. 
Of hymns, and psalms, and prayers supine, 
And penances and fafts, whereby our nature bleeds. 
We fhould obey ourselves alone. 

Nor afk what paths have others trod ; 
God wants no sign to know His own, 

Nor they to know their God. 
Better, far better now 
The dew upon my brow. 
Than all the ancient use and wont 
Of water from the holy font. 
Though fhed by holiefl hands on earth. 
The symbol of a heavenly birth. 
The bread and wine of quiet thought 
Is sacrament enough for me ; 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 69 

Enough the Temple of the world, 
The fky, the land, the sea: 
Whether the Spring perform its dewy rite ; 

Whether the Summer binds her brow with 

leaves ; 
Whether the Autumn Hands amid the flieaves ; 
Or whether Winter plucks his locks of white. 
God speaks to me in ftiouting winds. 
And in the waves that fhoreward come. 
And in the little inse6l's hum, 
And in the ftill small voice of human minds. 
The year, with all its train of nights and days, 
Is a perpetual service in His praise ; 
Morn comes from Him, as came the olden seers, 
With fiery messages of awe and love ; 
From Him the golden Noon that climbs above, 
Transfigured day by day from immemorial years ! 
And Night, incarnate Night, 
Forever veiled and calm, 
Eldeft of all things that created be ; 

Night reads in silence her eternal psalm. 
The gospel of the darkness, penned in light. 
The ftarred evangel of infinity! 
The road to Heaven is broader than the world. 
And deeper than the kingdoms of the dead j 
And up its ample paths the nations tread, 
With all their banners furled : 



70 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

No saint nor angel sits beside its gate, 

Holding the key within his griping hands : 
The loving gate of Heaven wide open Hands, 
Not to be closed again by earthly hate : 
And evermore, with all their grief and sin, 
The souls keep pouring in. 
Singing melodious psalms, 
While angels pitch their tents beneath the heavenly 
palms ! 

V. 

There be who love not Nature, souls forlorn, 
Who see no beauty in the smiling morn. 
No joy in noon, no tenderness in night. 

No pillared cloud of light ! 
Not such the little child, nor such the youth 

Who has not done his childly nature wrong : 
These Nature loves, and leads through realms of 
truth. 
Forever flufhed with atmospheres of Song ! 
Can I forget the wonder, and the joy. 
That Nature roused within me, when a boy ? 
The gufh of feelings, pure and undefiled, 
The deep and rapturous gladness. 
The nameless sadness. 
The Vision that overpowered the visionary child ? 
Forget ! forget ! the very hour I do. 
May Heaven forget me too ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 7 1 

May Nature fliut me In her waftes apart, 
And press me — never more on her maternal heart ! 

VI. 

Nature ! Nature ! I have worfhipped thee 
From being's dimmeft dawn, perchance before ; 
Or ere my spirit touched this earthly ftiore, 

Or time began with me. 
When but a babe, (so say the ancient crones 
Who nursed me then,) I watched the fky for 

hours. 
Smiled at the clouds, and laughed in glee at 
fhowers, 
. And wept when winds were at their wintrv moans. 
A little truant child with trembling tread, 

I sought the garden walks, with wondering mind. 
Perplexed to hear the fluting of the wind 
In branches overhead : 

1 loved the wind, I loved the whispering trees, 
I loved their fhadowy fhifting images. 

And loved the spots of light that lay hke smiles 
Around the green arcades, and leafy foreft aisles. 
With bolder ftcps I tracked the meadows, deep 
In fragrant grasses, decked with daisies white. 
And marked the mift on many a mountain height, 
Melting away like Sleep. 
The larks went up before me, and behind, 



72 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

But not so fail as songs within my tuneful mind ! 
Through sweeps of landscape, over lawns and 

plains, 
And where the birches walled their silver lanes 
I passed, and down the gradual flope of vales, 
Where tangled waters told their drowsy tales ; 
The river lay below in azure reft. 
Sparkled the lake with lilies on its breaft ; 
And where the jutting rocks o'errimmed the wall 
Of abrupt gulfs, I saw the waterfall 
With clouds of vapor blent, 
A column of white light, a snow-like monument ! 
It mattered little where I went, 
Everywhere I was content ; 
Everywhere I saw and heard 
Sights and sounds divine ; 
Everywhere was Nature ftirred. 
And Nature's love was mine. 
And I — what loved I not, O Nature, that was thine ? 
I held my peace ; I sang aloud ; 
I walked the world as in a cloud. 
/ loved the Clouds : 
Fire-fringed at dawn, or red with twilight bloom ; 
Or ftretched above, like isles of leaden gloom 
In heaven's vaft deep ; or drawn in belts of gray ; 
Or dark blue walls along the base of day ; 
Or snow-drifts luminous at higheft noon ; 



SONGS OF SUMMER. ^3 

Ragged and black in tempefts, veined with light- 
ning ; 
And when the moon was brlo-htenino- 
Impearled, and purpled by the changeful moon. 

/ loved the Moon : 
Whether ihe lingered by the porch of Even, 

When Day retiring ftruck his yellow tents ; 
Whether fhe scaled the ancient peaks of heaven. 

Whose angels watched her from its battlements ; 
Whether, like early Spring, fhe walked the night. 

O'er trails of cloudy snow j 
Whether fhe dwindled in the morning light, 

Like some departed spirit, loath to go ; 
Or sifted fhowers of silver through the trees. 
Or trod with her white feet across the heaving seas ! 
/ loved the Sea : 
Whether in calm it glassed the gracious day 

With all its light, the night with all its fires ; 
Whether In florm It lafhed its sullen spray. 

Wild as the heart when passionate youth expires ; 
Or lay, as now, a torture to my mind. 
In yonder land-locked bay, unwrinkled by the wind ! 
/ loved the IVind : 
Whether it kissed my hair, and pallid brow ; 
Whether with sweets my sense it fed, as now ; 
Whether it blew across the scudding main ; 
Whether it fhrieked above a flretch of plain j 



74 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Whether, on autumn days, in solemn woods, 

And barren solitudes, 
Along the wafte it whirled the withered leaves ; 
Whether it hummed around my cottage eaves. 
And fhook the rattling doors, 
And died with long-drawn sighs, on bleak and dreary 
moors ! 
Whether in winter, when its trump did blow 
Through desolate gorges dirges of despair. 
It drove the snowflakes flantly down the air. 
And piled the drifts of snow ; 
Or whether it breathed soft, in vernal hours. 
And filled the trees with sap, and filled the grass with 
flowers. 
Wind, sea, and moon, and clouds, and day and 
night. 
The weeks, and months, and seasons of the 
year : 
What was there was not dear ? 
What was not radiant with heavenly fight ? 
What did not Nature cherifh that was mine ? 
What did not I adore, O Nature, that was thine ? 

VII. 

My life with Nature now is blent j 

She is a portion of my blood j 
I am her passive infi:rument, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 75 

The creature of her every mood ; 
A part and parcel of her forms. 
Of her calms, and of her ftorms. 
To her my soul unfolds as violets do. 
When April winds are low, and April Mqs are blue. 
I am a harp whereon fhe plavs. 
When fhe accompanies her lays ; 
A sea of moon-like presence sways, 
Shifting its tides a thousand ways. 
Deep in her heart I live, and feel 
Whate'er fhe pleases to reveal ; 
And in my heart, with joy intense, 
I paint her forms that fade not thence. 
And in my thoughts see more and more magnificence ; 
My waking thoughts, and in my fleep 
I carry on the marvel deep. 
And dream all night of tropic seas and ikies. 
And Time immortal Youth, and Earth a Paradise ! 
Nor does the beautiful and bright 
Alone aiFe6f: me with delight ; 
Familiar things, and common-place. 
Give me emotions undefined ; 
As if I gazed in some seraphic face. 

Some presence filled with mind. 
A Presence fronts and haunts me everywhere. 

Stands in the sun, and dips below the sea ; 
Fills all the voideil spaces of the air, 



76 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

And lives in all things, like Eternity ! 
The motes of duft on which I tread. 
The floating flars above my head. 
All v^^ithout me, and within, 
To Nature and to Man are kin. 
Whence comes this ftrange affinity 
That Man, O Nature, has for thee ? 
Forever unto thee we run. 

And give ourselves away ; 
Like melting mifts that seek the sun. 
Like night that seeks the day. 
To Nature do we turn, and minifter. 
Because we were of old a part of her. 
It is a recognition, 

A memory, an appealing ; 
An interchange of vision. 
An interchange of feeling ; 
A twofold love, within the linked scope 
Of backward-looking A/[emory, and forv/ard-looking 
Hope ! 
The soul of man dete61:s, and sympathizes 

With its old fhapes of matter, long outworn ; 
And matter, too, to new sensations born, 
Dete6ts the soul of man, with spiritual surprises. 
Few underftand their mutual dreams. 

And few translate their speeches ; 
Save poets versed in Nature's themes. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 77 

And those whom Nature teaches. 
They flare at us, and we at them ; 
We dare not flight, nor dare contemn : 
We are the ripe fruit on the ftem. 
Not a leaf upon the tree. 

Not a bird upon the bough. 
But waves its little flag to me. 

And sings within my spirit now ; 
Sings to itself in bowers apart. 
Within the regions of my heart. 
I am what winds and waters make me ; 

What the clouds and thunders please ; 

And what the changeful seas : 
As Nature is, so men must take me ; 
For I to Nature's self belong. 

As much as any bud or bee ; 
And when you do to her a wrong. 

You do a wrong to me. 
Be it sad, or merry, or sweet, or fl:rong, 
She breathes her influence in my song. 
And in my daily life fhe gleams, 
And is the subftance of my dreams. 
I love her not as bard or painter might. 
To spy and seize on sound and sight. 

But for mine own delight. 

Often I do not hear, nor see. 

Nor know the banquet laid for me ; 



78 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

The sun may burn, the ftars may fhine, 
The pallid moon in heaven may pine, 
The sea may wafli a rocky fhore, 
The wind may howl, the tempeft roar, 
Nor I be other than before. 
It may be day, it may be night, 
Or foul or fair, 
I do not care, 
I go not there to learn, but for mine own delight ! 
And yet I learn what books can never teach. 
Nor any words express ; 
A myflic love, a wordless speech ; 
For Nature teaches so, in sacred silentness. 
And when we seem afleep in dreams, 

Our deepeft lore is caught. 
For Truth within man's nature dwells. 
Her fabled fount, her well of wells. 
Her cryftal deep of thought ! 

VIII. 

In silent thought, that yearns to find a tongue, 
Burthened with cares, and racked with cureless 

pains, 
I rove to-day through Nature's v/ide domains. 
No longer gay and young; 
No longer moved with feelings undefiled, 
No more, no more a child ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 70 

But wherefore grieve ? The Paft is paft, 

Nor can the Present always laft j 

It sows the Future in its seeds. 

And flowers will grow, where grow the weeds ; 

And suns will fhine, and dews will fall ; 
And Love, the sum of human needs. 

Love, comes to all : 
Yea ! even comes, so universal he. 
To me, to even me ! 
Then let me dry again these gathering tears. 

These bitter tears, and turn. Beloved, to thee ; 
For thee to live and die, in future years. 

As thou for only me ! 
Meanwhile my soul to meditation given, 
A many-sided mirror, broad and bright, 
Reflects whatever meets my thoughtful sight. 
The myriad fliapes and hues of earth and heaven ; 
Diffused through all, like odors in the wind, 
My mind the Universe, the Universe my Mind ! 
J851. 



8o SONGS OF SUMMER. 



INVOCATION TO SLEEP. 

Draw the curtains round your bed, 
And I'll fhade the wakeful light; 
'Twill be hard for you to ileep. 
If you keep me ftill in sight; 
But you muft though, and without me, 
For I have a song to write ; 
Then fleep, love, fleep : 
The flowers have gone to reft, 
And the birds are in the neft : 
It is time for you to join them beneath the wings of 
Sleep ! 

Wave thy poppies round her, Sleep ! 

Touch her eyelids, flood her brain : 
Banifh Memory, Thought, and Strife, 
Bar the portals of her life. 

Till the morning comes again. 
Let no enemy intrude 
On her helpless solitude : 

Fear, and Pain, and all their train — 



SONGS OF SUMMER. . 8 1. 

Keep the evil hounds at bay, 
And all evil dreams away. 
Thou, thyself, keep thou the key. 
Or entruft it unto me. 

Sleep ! Sleep ! Sleep ! 
A lover's eyes are bright, 
In the darkeft night. 
And jealous even of dreams, almoft of thee, dear 
Sleep ! 

I muft sit, and think, and think. 
Till the ftars begin to wink : 
(For the web of Song is wrought 
Only in the loom of Thought :) 
She muft lie, and fleep, and fleep,. \ 

(Be her {lumbers calm and deep !) 
Till the dews of morning weep : 
Therefore bind your sweeteft sprite 
To her service and delight. 
All the night. 

Sleep ! Sleep ! Sleep ! 
And I'll whisper in her ear, 

Like a bee among the flowers. 
What fhe loveth so to hear. 

In the night's impassioned hours, 
News from my warm heart to hers, 
Burthening Love's ambassadors, 
6 



82 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



A happy sigh and smile ; 
_ Crooning to myself the while 
Ditties delicate and free, 
Dedicate to her, and thee. 

Sleep ! Sleep ! Sleep ! 
For I owe ye both a boon, 
And I meant to grant it soon. 
In my golden numbers that breathe of Love and 
Sleep ! 




SONGS OF SUMMER. 83 



THE STORK AND THE RUBY. 

A CERTAIN prince — I have forgot his name — 

Playing one morning at the archer's game, 

Within a garden where his palace flood, 

Shot at a ftork, and spilled the creature's blood 

For very wantonness and cruelty. 

Thrice had he pierced his target in the eye 

At fifty paces ; twice defloured a rose. 

Striking each time the very leaf he chose ; 

Then he set up his dagger in a hedge, 

And split an arrow on its glittering edge. 

What next to hit he knew not. Looking round 

He saw a ftork juft lighted on the ground. 

To reft itself after its leagues of flight : 

The dewy walk in. which it ftood was bright. 

So white its plumage, and so clear its eyes. 

Twinkling with innocence, and sweet surprise. 

" I'll fhoot the silly bird," the prince exclaimed : 

And bending his ftrong bow he ftraightway aimed 

His keeneft arrow at its panting heart ; 

The lucky arrow missed a vital part 



84 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

(Or was it some kind wind that pufhed it by?) 
And only ftruck and broke the creature's thigh. 
The poor thing tumbled in a lily bed, 
And its blood ran, and made the lilies red. 
It marked the changing color of the flowers. 
The winding garden walks, the bloomy bowers. 
And laft the cruel prince, who laughed with glee — 
Fixing the picture in its memory : 
This done it ftruggled up, and flew away. 
Leaving the prince amazed, and in dismay. 

Beyond the city walls, a league or more, 
A little maid was spinning at her door. 
Singing old songs to cheer the long day's work : 
Her name was Heraclis. The fainting ftork 
Dropped at her feet, and with its ebon bill 
Showed her its thigh, broken, and bleeding ftill : 
She fetched it water from a neighbor spring. 
And, while it drank and wafhed each dabbled wing. 
She set the fra6lured bones with pious care. 
And bound them with the fillet of her hair. 
Eased of its pain again it flew away. 
Leaving the maiden happier all the day. 

That night the prince, as usual, went to bed. 
His royal wine a little in his head : 
Beside him ftood a caiket full of gems. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 85 

The spoil of conquered monarchs' diadems : 

Great pearls, milk-white, and fhining like the moon ; 

Emeralds, grass-green ; sapphires, like fkies of June j 

Brilliants that threw their light upon the wall ; 

And one great ruby that outfhone them all, 

Large as a pigeon's egg, and red as wine 

When held before the sun — a gem divine ! 

Through these he ran his fingers carelessly, 

Like one who dips a handful of the sea, 

To sun his eyes with dripping ftars of brine ; 

At laft he flumbered in the pale moonfhine. 

Meantime the watchful ftork was in his bowers ; 

Again it saw its blood upon the flowers, 

And saw. the walks, the fountain's fhaft in air, 

But not the cruel prince ; no prince was there : 

So up and down the spacious courts it flew, 

And ever nearer to the palace drew. 

Passing the lighted windows, row by row. 

It saw the prince, and saw the ruby's glow : 

Hopping into his chamber, grave and ftill. 

It seized the precious ruby with its bill. 

And spreading then its rapid wings in flight. 

Flew out, and vanifhed in the yawning night. 

Night flowly passed, and morning broke again : 

There came a light tap on the window-pane 

Of Heraclis : it woke her ; fhe arose. 

And, flipping on in hafte her peasant clothes, 



86 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Opened the door to see who knocked, and lo ! 
In walked the ftork again, as white as snov/, 
Triumphant with the ruby, whose red ray- 
Flamed in her face, anticipating day ! 
Again the creature pointed to its thigh. 
And something human brightened in its eye, 
A look that said, " / thank you! " plain as words 
The virgin's look was brighter than the bird's. 
So glad was fhe to see it was not dead : 
She flretched her hand to fleek its bowing head, 
But ere fhe could, it made a sudden ftand, 
And thruft the priceless ruby in her hand. 
And sailing swiftly through the cottage door 
Mounted the morning fky, and came no more ! 




SONGS OF SUMMER. 87 



[antique.] 

We are bent with age and cares, 
In the laft of our gray hairs, 
And we lean upon our ftaffs, 
Looking for the epitaphs ; 
For we are the laft, the laft, 
In the ruins of the Paft. 

When our youth was in its prime. 

Then it was a merry time ; 

Suns were golden, ftars were bright, 

And the moon was a delight : 

And we wandered in its beams 

In the sweeteft, sweeteft dreams ! 

Now our dreams are fled. 

For the happy Paft is dead ; 

And we feel it lived in vain, 

And will never come again. 

No ! 'tis gone ! and gone each trace 

Of its once-familiar face : 



88 SONGS OF SUMMER, 

Even the duft for which we yearn 
Is loft, and loft Its very urn ! 
Nothing remains except the tomb, 

[Earth, and heaven, so draped with clouds !] 
And we who wander in its gloom. 

And soon will need our fhrouds, 
So pale are we, and so aghaft 
At the absence of the Paft. 

We had friends when we were young, 
And we fhared their smiles and tears j 

But they are forever flown: 

We can only weep alone. 
For the unreturning years. 

Roses come again with Spring : 
[We are ftanding on the tomb. 
But beneath our feet they bloom !] 

And the summer birds do sing : 

But the dead who loved them so, 

They are in the winter's snow. 

Far from birds, and far from flowers. 

And this weary life of ours. 

All is over ! Naught remains, 

Save the memory of our pains. 

And the years that bear us faft 

To the silence of the Paft i 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 89 



PAIN IN AUTUMN. 

A DROWSY pain, a dull, dead pain 
Preys on my heart, and clouds my brain ; 
And fhadows brood above my dreams. 
Like spe6i:ral mifts o'er haunted ftreams. 

There is no fire within the grate ; 
The room is cold and desolate. 
And dampness on the window-panes 
Foretells the equinoctial rains. 
The stony road runs past the door. 
Dry and dusty evermore ; 
Up and down the people go. 
Shadowy figures, sad and flow : 
And the strange houses lie below. 

Across the road the dark elms wait. 
Ranged in a row before the gate. 
Giving their voices to the wind. 
And their sorrows to my mind. 



90 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Behind the house, the river flows, 
Half unrest and half repose ; 
Ships lie below with mildewed sails, 
Tattered in forgotten gales ; 
Along each hulk a whitifh line, 
The dafhing of the ancient brine : 
Beyond, the spaces of the sea. 
Which old Ocean's portals be : 
The land runs out its horns of sand, 
And the sea comes in to meet the land. 

Sky sinks to sea, sea swells to fky. 
Till they meet, and mock the eye ; 
And where they meet the sand hills lie ; 
No cattle in their pastures seen. 
For the yellow grass was never green : 
With a calm and solemn stare 
They look to heaven, in blank despair ; 
And heaven, with pity dumb the while. 
Looks down again with a sickly smile. 

The fky is gray, half dark, half bright. 
Swimming in dim, uncertain light. 
Something between the day and night. 
And the winds blow, but soft and low, 
Unheard, unheeded in their wo ; 
Like some sick heart, too near o'erthrown 



SONGS OF SUMMER. QI 

To vent its grief, by sigh or moan, 
Some heart that breaks, like mine, alone ! 

And here I dwell, condemned to see, 
And be, what all these phantoms be. 
Within this realm of penal pain. 
Beside the melancholy main ; 
The waste which lies, as legend saith. 
Between the worlds of Life and Death ; 
A soul from Life to Death betrayed, 
A Shadow in the World of Shade ! 




92 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE ABDICATION OF NOMAN, THE ELDER. 

"/$• it an echo of something 

Read 'with a boy' s delight. 
Viziers nodding together 

In some Arabian night? " 

Tennyson. 

NoMAN, the King of HIra, sat one day 
In his pavilion, pitched at Karwanak, 
With Bahram Gour, the son of Yezdejird, 
And Adi Ibn Zeid, the Persian bard : 
Cross-legged on scarlet cufhions fluffed with down 
They sat and smoked ; the bubbling of their pipes 
Was like a river In the land of fleep. 
The curtain of the tent was drawn aside, 
Looped up with golden cords ; a twinkling gleam 
Glanced from the tassels, smote the water-bowls, 
And perifhed in the great sea-emerald 
On Noman's turban : other light was none ; 
They lolled the hours away in purple dufk. 

Before the doorway of the tent they saw 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



93 



The palace park and garden, bright with spring. 

A pillared avenue of ftately palms 

Slept in the sun : a fountain rose and fell, 

Breaking the silver surface at its base ; 

Gold-filh, like sunken ingots, lay in heaps 

Beneath the fountain's rain ; beside its rim, 

Dipping his long bill in a lotus cup, 

A black crane ftooped : between the silent palms 

A length of silken carpet was unrolled ; 

A white gazelle dangled a silver chain. 

Picking its way through tufts of broidered flowers. 

Flowers of all hues and odors ftreaked the ground ; 

Roses, fire-red ; large tulips, cups of flame ; 

Banks of snow lilies, turning dew to pearls ; 

And rolling rivers of anemonies. 

The flowers that Noman loved ; their crimson leaves 

Were rubies set on ftalks of emerald. 

Broad meadows ftretched afar, wherein, dim-seen 

Through winking haze, the ftill Euphrates lay. 

The great Euphrates freih from Babylon. 

Between their whifFs of smoke with happy eyes 
They drank the landscape in : to Bahram Gour 
It grew his father's garden at Madain, 
Save that the Emir's daughter was not there. 
Whereat he sighed : his long beard Adi ftroked, 
And thrummed his idle fingers in the air, 



94 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Turning a couplet in his tuneful brain : 
Noman alone was sad, for he nor had 
The poet's idleness, nor prince's youth : 
Grown gray in troubled rule he longed for reft, 
But found it never ; fair things made him grieve, 
Because their lives are fhort. He saw the end. 

" Why grasp at wealth and power ? Why hoard 
up gold. 
Or make our whims a law for other men ? 
Earth hides her gold in veined rocks and hills. 
Packs it in river sands : we dig it out. 
And ftamp our kingly faces in its light. 
And call it ours : does Earth give up her claim ? 
Not file ; fhe calmly waits, and takes it back. 
We sift the sands, dive down into the waves, 
Ransack the caves for gems ; Earth gives them up : 
I have an hundred cafkets full of pearls ; 
Ten chefts of chrysolites ; a turquoise plate 
That holds a maund of corn ; a chandelier. 
The chains whereof are beryls, linked with gold. 
Its flame a ruby, found in Balafhan : 
Not mine, but Earth's ; for I fhall pass away, 
I, and my race, but Earth will ftill remain. 
And keep my gems j in palaces like mine. 
To swell the treasury of future kings. 
Or haply in the caverns where they grew. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 95 

"We build rich palaces, and wall them in, 
Make parks and gardens near, plant trees, sow 

flowers. 
And say — ^All this is ours I ' but what says Earth ? 
She only smiles her ftill cold smile of scorn : 
P^orefts a thousand parasangs in length 
Are hers, and hers the tropic's zone of bloom ; 
And, when we die, our marble palaces : 
She lets the jackal prowl about their courts ! 

" My days have numbered five and sixty years ; 
Twenty and eight were passed upon the throne : 
I count them loft. I may have gained some power ; 
Added a {qw wild tribes to those I rule. 
And treasures to my treasure, but my life — 
(I had so little time to think of that !) 
Is not a whit the richer, save in cares. 
Ah ! who that knows himself would be a king ? " 

So spake the King the secret of his heart. 
Like one who babbles to himself alone ; 
His head dropped on his bosom, and his beard 
Hung in his lap : the fhadow of his words 
Drifted across the ftream of Adi's thought, 
And, when the King had ended, he began : 

" Name me the King whose power was vaft 
enough 



96 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

To cope with death, or cheat the sepulchre. 
Whither is Chosroes gone, the mightieft, he. 
Of Persian Kings ? Whither did Sapor go ? 
And they, the fair-haired race, the Roman lords — 
Tell me why no memorial lives of them. 
And he, the nameless King, who Hadhr built, 
Where Khabur and the lordly Tigris flow ; 
He faced his palace walks with marble flabs, 
Pohfhed and white, and raised his roof so high, 
His ridgy roofs, the birds made nefts thereon : 
The thought of dying never crossed his mind ; 
But not the less he died, and died alone ; 
For when Death came to that unhappy King 
The very sentinels had fled his gates." 

" The end of all things muft be near at hand," 
Said Bahram Gour, half earneft, half in jefl:, 
" For lo ! the world hath now two Solomons, 
Whose wisdom is compressed in three small words. 
The knell of Folly — ^All is Vanity ! ' 
It may be so, my dear philosophers. 
But are you free from blame ? What says the song ? 
' It is my sight that fails me^ not the rose 
That waxes pale ; my scent that is too coarse^ 
No lack of odour in the heavenly mufk.^ 
Cry down the world who will, but Bahram Gour 
Will love it ftill." "And I," the poet said, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



97 



His fancied sadness dying with the words 
That gave it birth, " and never more than now, 
When to the quiet tent and drowsy pipe 
Succeeds the eager life on flying fteeds." 

From out their marble flails the dufky grooms 
Led forth the royal ftud of milk-white mares j 
The falconers came next with hooded birds. 
Each with a silver label on its leg ; 
And then the keepers with the beafts of chase 
In chains ; lithe panthers, and keen-scented dogs. 
Tigers, whose tawny hides are mapped with black, 
And lions with no manes : the white gazelle 
Fled from their cruel eyes to Noman's tent. 
Slowly, like one who wills away a dream. 
Lifting his head the King called home his thoughts. 
He saw the trembling creature at his feet, 
And fondled it ; the voice of Adi's lute 
Wooing a song brought Adi to his mind. 
The jingling of a scabbard Bahram Gour ; 
Adi ftill sat and smoked, but Bahram Gour 
Had risen, and was girding on his sword. 
'' My sombre fancies led me from the chase ; 
But now that I have found myself once more 
Let us at once depart : they wait for us." 
He beckoned, and the grooms led up their fteeds. 



g8 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Between the palms, whose fhadows ftruck their 

brows. 
Launching across the carpet's bed of flowers. 
Around the fountain's ghttering mift they rode : 
The fretful panthers snuffed, and tugged their chains ; 
The calmer lions, quiet in their ffrength. 
Strode on, and dragged their keepers after them. 

Not far from Hira, by the river's side. 
Where flood a ruined city, was a tomb ; 
Between the river and the tomb were trees 
Whose twinkling leaves were fhaken by the wind. 
Dropping .the hunt before the game was roused 
Thither the King and poet rode alone ; 
They saw the fhaken boughs, but felt no wind. 
'" The leaves are tongues," said Noman, " and they 

speak. 
With some grave message charged, or prophecy : 
You read the hidden meaning of the flowers, 
Can you expound the language of the trees ? " 

" Many have here dismounted from their fteeds. 

And kneeling camels, in the days of old ; 

Have flaked their thirft with wine beneath our fhade. 

And led their camels to the limpid tide : 

They flrained their fhining wine from precious flafks. 

They tossed the splendid trappings of their fleeds ; 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



99 



Gaily they lived, the pensioners of Time ; 
But ere life's noon they died, cut ofF by Fate. 
Their afhes drift and wafte like withered leaves. 
Blown by the eaft wind now, now by the weft." 
So spake the trees to Adi ; so he spake. 

"All things are in a league with my grave thoughts 
To make me think of death," replied the King : 
"If leaves whose little lives of sun and dew 
Laft not the year out say that man is duft. 
What muft the duft, where men by millions fleep. 
The dead of ages, say ? " The poet ftooped. 
And scooped his two hands full of dry white duft. 
And held it to his ear. " Interpret it." 
" Know that the duft was once a man like thee ; 
Know too that thou wilt one day be but duft." 
So spake the duft to Adi : so he spake. * 

" The words are changed," said Noman, " not the 

tune. 
For that ftill urges man's mortality : 
When man forgets his end, nor earth nor heaven 
Can hold their peace. The tomb remains to speak 5 
I go to queftion that : wait for me here. 
Fear not to see me enter its dark walls ; 
The time will come when they will ftiut me in 
Forever : now I fliall return again." 



100 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

He waved the poet back, and throwing wide 
Its mouldering doors went down into the tomb. 

Before the place, a watchful sentinel. 

The poet paced his beat, with noiseless fteps. 

Hearkening the while to catch the King's leaft call : 

He heard the ta,lking leaves above his head, 

The river rippling on the sandy fhore. 

But not the King : the grass was growing thick 

Around the tomb, but where the mares were hitched 

It grew not : cutting with his sword a swath. 

He bore an armful to the hungry mares : 

But ftill the King nor called to him, nor came. 

At laft the fiery arrows of the noon 

Drove back the lessening fhadows of the trees. 

And hemmed them in a circle round their trunks ; 

To this the bard retreated from the heat. 

The happy light came down upon his heart. 

And, ftretched at ease, he sang a summer song : 

" The morning moon is set, the ftars are gone ; 
Beside the palace gate the peacocks ftrut. 
And in the tank the early lotus wakes. 

" The dew fell all night long, and drenched my robe ; 
The nightingale complained to me, in vain ; 
I waited for the dawn to meet my love. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 101 



" She ftands before me in the garden walk, 
Her blue robe bordered by a fringe of pearls ; 
She ofFers me a rose : I kneel to her. 

" ' Nay ! speak not yet, though all your words are 

pearls ! 
Your smiles outrun your speech, and greet me firfl: ; 
But when you smile not, speak, or I fhall die ! 

" ' I kiss the rose : I would it were your hps ! 
But wherefore ? such a kiss would end my days. 
Pity me, sweet ; my heart is at your feet ! ' 

" My long black hair is ftreaked with silver threads. 
Years dim my eyes ; yet ftill, in thought, I see 
The Rose of Beauty in the garden walk. 

" She fleeps the long, long fleep : disturb her not 

O nightingales ! be silent, or depart ; 

And thou my heart be ftill, or moan, and break." 

The river rippled louder, but the leaves 
Crowding together whispered, and the clafti 
Shook one at Adi's feet ; the duft was ftirred : 
He raised his eyes, and lo ! a cloud of duft 
Blown from the clattering hoofs of flying fteeds : 
He knew the milk-white mares, and knew the troop 



102 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

That rode them — Noman's huntsmen; Bahram 

Gour 
Trailing his spear rode wildly at their head. 
" The King is loft," he fhouted as he came : 
" Not so," said AdI, pointing to the tomb, 
" The King is there : he muses in the tomb ; 
Perchance he fleeps : I would have fhared his dreams, 
But he forbade, and made me wait him here." 
Then Bahram Gour went down into the tomb. 
To wake the King, and many of the lords 
Went with him ; those who ftayed behind were 

hufhed. 
They heard the talking leaves above their heads. 
The river rippling on the sandy fhore. 
But not the King ; at length a voice was heard — 
" The King is dead,'^ and Bahram Gour came out 
Bearing a lifeless body in his arms. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. JO3 



THE MOON ON THE SPIRE. 

The white clouds lie in drifts to-night 
Around the moon, whose silver fire 

Kindles the old Cathedral spire. 
And makes the cross a living light. 

It gleams and twinkles through my blinds. 
It fhines on those who walk the flreet. 
It opens heaven to those who meet 

At vespers with believing minds. 

" How marvellous the Cross," they say, 
" That crowns the ftately Chriftian pile ! 
It lends the moon a saintly smile. 

It saves the world from day to day." 

*» Ye speak your thoughts, but T who sit 

Above the crowd, and watch the moon — 
I hear from her cold lips a tune 
To other words : and this is it : 



104 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

" My crescent glitters in the air, 

Above the mosque of Moslem lands : 
High in his tower the muezzin ftands. 

And calls the faithful there to prayer. 

'' By Indian ftreams, and swamps of rice. 
Pagodas rise, and idols frown : 
I pour my heathen brightness down. 

And make the night a Paradise. 

" Pagoda, mosque, and Chriftian dome, 
I see them all ; in all the flame 
Of worfhip burns: God sees the same 

God has in each and all his home.'* 



SONGS OF SUMMER. IO5 



THE GRAVE OF ROBIN HOOD. 

Beside this oak, below this mound, 
In this unconsecrated ground. 
This dim, remote, neglected wood. 
He fleeps, they tell me — Robin Hood. 
This is his grave ; they laid him here. 
That left not in the world his peer : 
Here doth his body go to duft ; 
His soul hath gone to God, I truft. 

He was a knight in days of yore, 
A lord, or earl, or may be more, 
*Who forfeited his right divine. 
When Richard fought in Paleftine. 
But we who come from o'er the sea 
Care nothing for his pedigree ; 
That fham with us is out of date, 
A bugbear of the feudal ftate; 
Nor will it ever win again 
The fear or love of freeborn men. 
It is enough for us that he 



I06 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Himself was noble, brave, and free : 
We leave the reft to fools and knaves. 
Who build upon their fathers' graves. 
So, whether lord, or whether earl. 
Or but a base and common churl. 
He was a noble man and good. 
The King of Outlaws, Robin Hood. 
He ftayed to hear his banifhment. 
And then to Sherwood Foreft went. 
Followed by fourscore archers keen. 
In liveries of Lincoln green. 
All famous marksmen, ftout and tall -, 
And he was chief among them all. 
For he could peel a willow wand, 
And fio;ht the beft man in the land. 
And there they dwelt for many a year, 
And lived upon the royal deer. 

Methinks I see them, blithe and gay, 
Feafting upon a summer's day; 
The tables groan with hearty cheer 
Of beef, to Engliftimen so dear, 
Juicy, and rare ; and venison fteaks ; 
Cold warden pies, and sugared cakes, 
And pafties filled with lark and quail, 
Flanked round with cans of foaming ale. 
And in the ftiadow of a tree. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 10/ 

Whose boughs do make a canopy. 
Upon his dais sits Robin Hood, 
The merry monarch of the wood. 
With sweet Maid Marian at his side, 
By virtue of her grace and pride 
The miftress there, so debonair. 
With knots of wild flowers in her hair. 
She twines his cup ; nor only fhe. 
But near a many damsels be. 
Sipping the cups of clouted cream. 
While lifted goblets clafti and gleam. 
And close beside the wine-butt ftands 
Friar John : his beads are in his hands, 
But put not to their goodly use : 
His cowl is ofF, his girdle loose j 
To twift it tight he vainly tries : 
He rolls to heaven his amorous eyes. 
And chants a mass, which breaks ere long 
Into a jolly drinking-song ! 

So passed the days of feaft and fun, 

The careless children of the sun ; 

But sober hours succeeded soon, 

And music of a sweeter tune. 

The maidens sat in summer bowers. 

And sang old songs, and gathered flowers, 

Or hunted round for hollow trees, 



I08 SONGS OF SUMMER, 

To rob the hives of wandering bees. 
Their fhafts and bows the archers made. 
And fhot at targets in the fhade j 
Wrefl-led and fought with right good will, 
And pra6lised games of ftrength and fkill ; 
While Robin Hood, bold Robin Hood, 
In solemn fancies walked the wood, 
Till all the freedom of the place 
Did fill his heart, and light his face ! 

Had he been queftioned, frank and fair. 

About his right and title there. 

He would have answered with a smile. 

In something like the following ftyle : 

" My right and title ? Sir, do you 

The vexed subjecSl ftill renew 

Of what is mine and what is thine. 

When both are mortal, and divine ? 

'Od's blood ! we all are men, I guess. 

And none are more, and none are less, 

By birth and right ; if you or I 

Say we are more, we do but lie ! 

The world is ours, despite the few 

Who lay and hold a claim thereto. 

If 'tis our privilege and right 

To breathe the air, and see the light, 

'Tis ours to dwell where'er we please. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 

In cities, towns, or under trees, 

Provided none are dispossessed, 

For sure we would not rob the reft : 

Now none, good Sir, are oufted here. 

And none are hurt — save good fat deer; 

If any fhould complain 'tis they. 

As, without doubt, some will to-day : 

For, under favor. Sir, 'tis meet 

That men, tall men hke us ftiould eat. 

As for the King, why, it may be 

That venison is his property j 

But let him fhow his rightful claim. 

The Bill of Sale in Nature's name. 

The lease divine, he holds in fee. 

Forever dispossessing me. 

Condemned to bread, which I, poor man, 

Muft get — the beft way that I can ! 

And let him prove his claim by law, 

In fterling Englifh without flaw. 

And I will yield his ground to-day. 

And heavy damages will pay ; 

But till he does, I have a right 

As good as his — the rule of Might. 

So forward ! hunt the kingly deer. 

And hey, for feafting, dance and cheer ! 

I'll talk to you some other day. 

And so, your servant. Boys, away ! " 



109 



no SONGS OF SUMMER. 

So would, methinks, brave Robin Hood 
Have proved his right and title good. 
To curious queftioners, and they 
Persifting ftill, another way- 
He would have ta'en to make it plain, 
And drawn an arrow to the head ; 
A moft convincing thing, 'tis said. 
But few had ftayed to hear, I ween. 
An argument so sure and keen. 
And faith, I think the knave was right : 
But right or not, he had the Might, 
And he maintained it till he died, 
By Might opposed on every side, 
A merry outlaw, bold and free. 
The very Lord of Liberty ! 

And is this all the outlaw did ? 

And is there nothing evil hid ? 

There surely muft be something more. 

Some cloud that fhould have come before. 

There is some little talk, indeed. 

Of how he made the keepers bleed ; 

Some end to some old flierifPs hope. 

Before he could adjuft the rope : 

Some talk of priefts, and bifhops old 

He eased of certain sums of gold ; 

Some fight, perchance, againft the King, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. m 

Some victory, or some such thing : 

But nought of blood unjuftly flied, 

Nor tax on malt, nor tax on bread. 

Nor pious frauds of holy, sees. 

Whose bifhops roll in golden ease, 

Nor fhooting starving men that dare 

Molest his lordfhip's deer or hare : 

Nothing that one to-day may do. 

And still be lawful, good, and true. 

Or hosts would wear a branded brow 

In lawful, merry England now. 

Then let us, if you please, be free 

From cant and prim hypocrisy. 

Nor lift our hands in perfect prayer. 

For flefh is sinful everywhere ; 

And few, that dare, had 'scaped his crimes, 

Had they been hving in his times, 

Banifhed like him, and hunted down 

By all the minions of a crown. 

So let him rest, nor dare to breathe 

Calumnious airs to blight his wreath ; 

But rather pile your marbles round. 

And make this forest holy ground. 

That men may come from far and near, 

To reverence him who fl umbers here ; 

For none for man's best rights have stood, 

More manfully than Robin Hood, 

The brave old freeman, Robin Hood ! 



112 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE CHILDREN'S PRAYER. 

If there is any thing that will endure 

The eye of God, because it still is pure. 

It is the spirit of a little child, 

Frefli from his hand, and therefore undefiled. 

Nearer the gate of Paradise than we, . 

Our children breathe its airs, its angels see ; 

And when they pray, God hears their simple prayer. 

Yea, even fheathes his sword, in judgment bare : 

Witness this legend of a by-gone time. 

Itself a song, though yet untold in rhyme. 

Where stretches Egypt, and its gardens smile. 
Won from the desert by the lordly Nile, 
Famine and Pestilence went hand in hand 
Of old, and ravaged that unhappy land ; 
For lo ! the Nile, wherein its plenty lies. 
The fertilizing Nile forgot to rise : 
Day after day it lay, a fluggifh flood. 
And flimy monsters wallowed in its mud. 
When spread the news, and ill news fly apace, 
A fearful panic seized the Moslem race j 



SONGS OF SUMMER. II3 

For not alone its native tribes it fed, 

But all the Eaft to Egypt looked for bread. 

In Cairo firft, there moft improvident, 

Then in the towns, and in the wandering tent. 

Under the palms, by many a fhrunken well, 

Fainting they fell, and perifhed where they fell. 

At firft they merely ftarved j but by and by 
A dread infection brooded in the fky ; 
There was no time to ftarve, with every breath 
They drew in death, a tainted, loathsome death. 
All business ceased ; bazaars and mosques were 

closed : 
Somev/here about his tower the muezzin dozed ; 
Was heard no more his cry, (it was too late ! ) 
" There is no God but God! Lo ! God is Great! " 
No more the faithful bowed towards the Eaft : 
Was kept no more the Bairam's sacred feaft : 
(The fafts, alas ! they could not help but keep !) 
The land was fhrouded in a deathly fleep. 
You might have walked through Cairo, ftreet by 

ftreet. 
Nor met a soul ; 'tv/ere better not to meet : 
The flying thief, the murderer abhorred. 
Or plague-ftruck beggars — such were those abroad. 

At length a fheik remembered what was writ, 
(Through faith, not doubt, had he forgotten it :) 
That — " Children are the keys of Paradise.''^ 

8 



114 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Also that — " They alone are good and wise^ 
Because their thoughts^ their very lives are prayer.'''' 
He sought the mosque, summoned the people there, 
Told them his thought, and made its meaning plain, 
That they by childiih lips fhould pray again. 
'Twas said, and done : the Emir gave command. 
And ftraight the muezzins sang it through the land. 

The hour was fixed at dawn ; at laft dawn cam.e : 
Slowly the sun arose, a globe of flame 
Struggling with blood-red clouds : in every ftreet 
Was seen a crowd, was heard the tramp of feet : 
Around the mosques they gathered witl^a sigh. 
Waiting to know if they fhould live or die ! 
The Imauns crowned the babes with early flowers, 
And bore them up the minarets and towers, 
Even to their topmoft summits, where they ftood. 
And saw the Pyramids and Nile's black flood. 
And Cairo at their feet, a breathless mass, 
Dying to hear them pray, and see what came to pass ! 
It was a beautiful, but solemn sight 
To mark the trembling children robed in white. 
Painted again ft the red and angry fky. 
Stretching their arms to Him who dwells on high ! 
But there they ftood, and there they knelt and prayed. 
And from that hour the peftilence was ftayed ; 
For while they prayed there came a rufh of wind 
That rent the clouds, and fhowed the sun behind j 



SONGS OF SUMMER. II5 

They saw its broad, bright light, and seemed to hear 

The wave of palms, the flow of waters near. 

Ah yes ! 'twas true : the Nile began to rise, 

As if its springs were fed from the benignant fkies ! 

It rose, and rolled, and ran before the breeze, 

Its long waves furrowed like the ftormy seas ; 

Its mud was swept away : its monfters sank : 

It swayed and snapped the reeds along the bank, 

Raging and roaring, rising higher and higher. 

Far-flaming in the sun, a fheet of windy fire ! 

All wept with joy. And now there came a man 

Wild with good news ; he fhouted as he ran 

" There is no God but God ! Lo ! God is Great ! 

There Jiands a row of camels at the gate^ 

Laden for all with sacks of wheat and grain J ^ 

They fell upon their knees, and wept again ; 

But they, the children, meek, and undefiled. 

Marched through the ftreets, and clapped their hands, 

and smiled : 
Nor was there longer plague or famine there. 
Thanks be to God, who heard the children's prayer 1 






Ji6 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



STANZAS. 

I OFTEN wifh that I could know 

The fate in ftore for me, 
The measure of my joy and woe — 

The man that I fhall be. 
I do not fear to meet the worft 

The gathering years can give j 
My Ufe has been a life accurft 

From youth, and yet I live. 
The Future may be overcaft. 
But never darker than the Paft. 

My mind will grow as years depart, 

With all the winged hours ; 
And all my buried seeds of Art 

Will bloom again in flowers ; 
But buried hopes no more will bloom, 

As in the days of old ; 
My youth is lying in its tomb, 

My heart is dead and cold ! 
And certain sad, but nameless cares 
Have flecked mv locks with silver hairs. 



• SONGS OF SUMMER. 11/ 

No bitter feeling clouds my grief, 

No angry thoughts of thee ; 
For thou art now a faded leaf 

Upon a fading tree. 
From day to day I see thee sink 

From love, and faith, and truth ; 
I sigh, but dare not bid thee think 

Of what thou wert in youth : 
For oh ! the thought of what thou art 
Muft be a hell within thy heart ! 

My life is full of care and pain, 

My heart of old desires j 
But living embers yet remain 

Below its dying fires : 
Nor do I fear what all the years 

May have in ftore for me, 
For I have wafhed away with tears 

The blots of Memory : 
But thou — despite the love on high — 
What is there left thee but to die ! 



Il8 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



By the margent of the sea 

I would build myself a home, 
Where the mighty waters be. 

On the edges of their foam ; 
Ribs of sands ihould be the mounds 
In my grounds : 

My grasses fhould be ocean weeds, 
Strung with pulpy beads ; 
And my blossoms fhould be fhells. 

Bleaching white, 
Waihed from ocean's deepeft cells 

By the billows morn and night. 
Morn and night — in both their light. 

Up and down the paven sand, 
I would tramp, while Day's great lamp 

Rose or set, on sea and land. 
Through a sea of vapours dark 
Glimmering, like a burning bark. 
Drifting o'er its yawning tomb 
With a red and lurid gloom ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



119 



Seldom fliould the morning's gold 
On the waters be unrolled j 
Or the troubled queen of night 
Lift her mifty veil of light. 
Neither wholly dark, nor bright, 
Gray by day, and gray by night — 
That's the light, the fky for me, 
By the margent of the sea. 

From my v/indow, when I rose 

In the morning, I would mark 
The gray sea in its endless throes. 

And many a bark. 
As I watched the paUid sails. 

Bearing naught to me or mine, 
I would conjure up the gales 

Soon to draggle them in brine : 
Then, my cloak about my face, 
Up and down the sands I'd pace, 
Making footprints for the spray 
To wash away. 

Waves might break along the shore. 
And thunders roar ; 
I should only hear aghaft 
The solemn moaning of the Paft ! 
And if ftorms should come, and rain 

Pour in torrents doy/n the iky. 



120 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

What care I ? 
What cares any one in pain ? 

Are not tears still wrung from me, 
Woe is me ! and all in vain, 
Fallino- faster than the rain 

In the sea. 
But it would be over then. 

And I would no longer weep : 
Grief is for the sea of men ; 

By God's ocean it mull fleep. 
Happy, happy would I be 
By the margent of the sea ! 

Up and down the barren beaches ; 

Round the ragged belts of land ; 
In along the curving reaches ; 

Out along the horns of sand : 
Over the ledges of the rocks, 
Where the surges comb their locks. 
And their wreathed buds remain, 
Not to bloom again ; 
Many a league and hour I stray 
And watch the madness of the spray. 

The caverns in its hollow wall : 
Its flame-like currents mounting flow ; 
Its rounding crest of frothy snow ; 

Its crumbling fall : 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 121 

The climbing sun in light betrayed 

By a spot of thinnest shade ; 

The tossing foam, the wandering plain 

Of the melancholy main ; 

The sea-mew darting everywhere, 

Now on the water, and now in the air, 

Vexing me with frantic scream. 

Like a phantom in a dream — 

In dreams I do behold them all. 

Mixed with wave and wind ; 
But hardly know, so strange they seem, 

With such thoughts combined. 
Whether I behold them there. 
Or the sorrow and despair 

In my mind. 
Wandering where its tortures be. 
By the margent of the sea ! 




122 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



CHORIC HYMN. 

I. 

The little birds awake at peep of day, 

When soft winds shake their nests, and leaves are 

Stirred ; 
The buds unseal their lids beneath the spray, 
Called by the dews, by mortal ears unheard j 
But thou, though we have called thee, over-loud, 
Thrice with our shrillest voices, thou art mute : 

But we will touch the lute. 
And melt the dream that wraps thee like a cloud. 
We passed along the borders of the vale. 
And peeped into it from the misty hill ; 
Far in its depths we heard the nightingale 
Muffled in song : we hear him singing still. 
We sat together all in thoughtful rest, 
Last eve, and watched the golden chaff of light. 
The sheaves of sunset, bounden in the West, 
Stored in the closing garners of the Night : 
And when pale Hesperos with silver crook 
Led forth his starry flock from out their fold. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 1 23 

We wept together in the bofky nook, 

And Hnked our hearts with kisses, each thrice told. 

Hast thou forgot our kisses, and thine own ? 

(We dreamed of those sweet kisses all the night !) 

Forgot thy loving maidens, chaste and white ? 

Forgot the vale, whose depths are yet unknown ? 

It cannot be ! Awake, and answer " No ! " 

O, say us " No ! " or we must wake, and weep : 

Give us a little sign, before we go. 

That we are not forgotten in thy fleep : 

Think of us, one and all, as we of thee, 

Both now and evermore, Persephone. 

II. 

Hearken ! our lutes are strung with silver wires, 

That nicely suit the strain j 

Our voices melt therein, like soft desires, 

Or South winds dying in a vernal rain. 

The fky-lark listens in the woods apart. 

Since twilight fleeping in the falling dew. 

And hoards our music in his brimming heart. 

Meaning a sweet repayment from the blue. 

But thou art bound in flumber, deaf to all. 

Mute as a little maid beneath her pall, 

Heedless of dear ones coming there to weep. 

Locked in the cold and everlasting fleep. 

If such should be thy fleep, O what should we 



124 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Say to Demeter, in her woe divine ? 

And to our hearts, and all that alk and pine, 

For all v/ould then demand their lost Persephone ? 

III. 
Hark ! hear ye not a stirring in her bower, 
A rustling in the dimness of the leaves ? 
Ah yes ! and see, the morning in its eaves. 
Braids through the twinkling green a golden shower. 
Strike all your lutes again, and break the bands 
That Sleep has woven round her in the night ; 
Let melting Music with its loving hands 
Slowly unwind his tangled fkeins of light. 
Up-gathering all thy poppies, drowsy-sweet, 
And all thy syrop-urns of mandragore. 
Fly ! Morpheos, fly ! ere Morning's winged feet, 
Fire-sandalled, bear him to thy palace-door. 

Where, waiting thee, thy Dreams 
Still linger, blinded by his dazzling beams, 
Fly ! Morpheos, fly ! with heavy-lidded eyes : 
The night is done, the maiden would arise. 
Awake Persephone ! the finches round 
Chirp to the swallows, twittering overhead ; 
And little crickets answer from the ground, 
Hidden in tufted mosses, crisp and red. 
Awake ! awake ! let fluggards weak and gray 
Before their time, drowse out the morning hours ; 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I25 

Health-loving maids are up before the day, 
To trample in the dew, and gather flowers. 
Flowers grow around in myriads, even here, 
In this dark forest, beaded thick with dew , 
They call for thee, within thy spirit's ear, 
And all the happy birds are calling too. 
And we thy loving maids, so dear to thee : 
Then wake and rise, O rise, divine Persephone ! 

1849. 




126 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE FISHER AND CHARON. 

Where wild Laconia juts into the sea 

The filher Diotimus had his home ; 

Between the waters and the woods it ftood, 

A wattled hut, whose floor was ftrewn with leaves 

And crisp dry sea-weeds : when the tide came in 

The surf ran up the beach, even to the door. 

Here lived the fiftier and his aged wife, 

Doro, his second self; flie on the land. 

And he upon the sea, their long lives passed. 

He rose at early dawn and dragged his boat 

Down to the water's edge, threw in his oars, 

His lines, and bait, and then with lufty ftrokes 

Pulled out into the gulf through clouds of mifl. 

The cold dark waves set fhoreward, edged with foam, 

The dark rocks rose, and dipt, and passed from 

sight : 
At lafl day came. All day he rowed, and fifhed. 
Now at his lines, now sweating at the oar : 
Meantime his old wife Doro sat at home. 
Mending his nets, or spinning in the sun. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I27 

From fliore to fhore he knew the gulf, the rocks, 
The curling eddies and the isles of weed ; 
He knew the haunts and habits of the fiih, 
How beft to catch them, and the bait they loved ; 
The sea-birds too, his fellow fifliers, they. 
He knew them all. From Tenarus to Crete, 
And where the beaches of Egilia break 
The fhining surge, which dies among their fliells. 
He tracked the scaly tenants of the deep. 
The summer smote him with its fierceft fires. 
Burned his old face, and browned his sinewy arms ; 
The winter nipt him with its ftill cold wind. 
And drenched his cloak of mats with colder rain ; 
For days he saw no sun, so thick the clouds : 
But cloud or sun he put to sea at dawn 
Fearless, and with the duik of eve returned ; 
The sunset was a torch to light him home ; 
His boat was guided by its golden flare 
Straight to the fliore : he saw his hut afar. 
And Doro on the sands : she beckoned him : 
His sharp keel cut the waves, and, ere its wake 
Sank in the blackness, grated on the sand. 

They lived the common life of little things 
Summed up in poverty : like waves the days. 
The years went by, each day and year alike. 
The lafl: alone remembered. They were young ; 
Then crooked wrinkles crept about their eyes : 



128 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Then they were old. They hved, and loved, and 

died. 
One autumn day, when tropic birds flew home, 
The fisher sat beside his dying wife : 
She lay upon a couch of withered leaves 
That ruftled as she moved j above her hung 
A coil of line, with sea-weed on its hooks ; 
A wicker baiket was the fisher's seat : 
Their dim eyes met, and both with tears were wet. 
" Hereafter, Doro, I shall weep alone," 
Said Diotimus. " Not alone," she moaned, 
" For I shall walk the solemn shore of death 
In tears till you shall come : " she clutched his knee, 
Twifted her trembling fingers in his hand. 
Looked in his face, and waited for the end. 
The waters lapped the door ftone, and went back ; 
The tide was flowly setting out to sea, 
Leaving a narrow ftrip of barren sand. 
When all was over Diotimus rose 
And called the fishers' wives to wash the dead; 
But firft he placed the needful obelus. 
The ferriage of the dead, beneath her tongue j 
Her spirit else had wandered by the Styx 
An hundred years among the wretched ghofts. 
They buried her behind the fisher's hut. 
Hard by the wood, among its fallen leaves ; 
The dead leaves ruftled in the reftless wind. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 12^ 

And mingled in the fifher's broken dream : 
It seemed to him the leaves whereon he lay- 
Were ftirred that night. The dead was by his side ! 
He rose at dawn, and rowed to sea again, 
Scarce knowing what he did j a league from fliore 
He saw his net was loft, or left behind : 
He dropped his oar, and let the crazy boat 
Drift as it would, his idle thoughts the while 
Drifting about the ocean of the Paft.^-" 
That day he caught no fifh. He found the net,, 
When the wan sunset led him to his hut ; 
'Twas on his bed, the pillow of the dead. 
He used that net no more. Sometimes for days 
He ftayed within the hut, to twift his lines, 
To mend his wicker bafkets, or his cloak ; 
And then whole days and nights he ftayed at sea : 
He saw the sun go down into the sea, 
Plunging in flame behind the weftern waves ; 
He saw him rise, his bath of darkness paft. 
And scale the purple eaft : wrapt in his cloak. 
The bottom of the boat his onlv bed. 
He lay and watched the ftars : he saw the Bear 
Steal from his hiding-place, and all night long 
Prowl round the northern pole ; the Hyades 
Sprinkle the threatening forehead of the Bull; 
The Fifli swim through the portals of the south. 
Chasing the Swan ; and, in the glimmering east 
9 



130 SONGS OF SUMMER, 

The Charioteer, the Goat that suckled Jove 
Perched on his fhoulder, looking over Crete. 
The sea-birds knew him, and, no longer ihy, 
Swooped down, and snatched the fifh around his 

boat ; 
Yea, lighted on his boat, his very oars, 
And screamed, and chattered of their briny loves : 
He harmed them not, his thoughts were in the Paft. 
" Could Time reftore those days, or give her back," 
The fifher thought, " then I could die in peace ; 
But Time will not reftore them, nor will fhe 
Return to me : the dead return no more." 
'" But there's a way to her," the old man thought. 
And flared in the dark water. " Day and night 
The gate ftands wide ; a sudden flaw of wind 
Might send me through it, nay, a fiih's fin 
Rubbing againft the bottom of the boat. 
There are a thousand doors that lead to death : 
I trail my fingers in the rippling brine 
And dip my death ; a cup of this salt wine 
Drained in the sunless sea would end my days. 
But would it help me to my wife again. 
My dear, dear Doro ? Does fhe wait for me. 
There where my soul would land ? I know not 

that." 
He flared in the black water more and more ; 
He saw the tangled weeds, the glancing fifh, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I3I 

But Doro never; only in his dreams 

Did he behold her, and fhe seemed to weep, 

Walking alone the solemn fhores of Death ! 

But now the tropic birds were all flown home. 
The autumn leaves were fhed, and wintry rains 
Were sown in swelling seas -, cold blew the winds. 
It was too cold to live upon the sea j 
The sea was full of ice, and every spray 
That lifted his frail boat froze on the prow : 
Besides his boat grew frailer day by day ; 
Old like himself; it scarcely rode the waves : 
A ftorm would swamp it. " I fliould find my death 
In the cold waters," Diotimus said, 
" But not my dear dead wife ; for though I died 
I could not join the souls across the Styx, 
So poor am I : I have no obolus 
To fee old Charon." So he sought the fhore. 
He hung his nets and lines within the hut. 
Stiffened with froft ; made up his bed of leaves ; 
And gathered fagots in the windy wood 
To feed his fire : he walked the bleak bare wood. 
Lone as the wind that snapped the withered limbs ; 
Also the barren beach, the ftretch of sand. 
Close to the tumbling wall of roaring surf. 
The surf, and sand, and melancholy wood 
Troubled him less, so wafte and grim were they. 
Than did the hut ; the memory of the dead 



132 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 



Peopled the lonely hut, and filled his thoughts. 
He seemed to see, or saw, his vaniflied wife 
About her household duties all the day ; 
She mended nets, fhe spun, fhe built his fires : 
At night he dreamed of her ; when the wind blew 
'Twas fhe who fhook his door 5 when fell the rain, 
Trickling upon him through the crumbling roof, 
'Twas fhe who wept, the tears he felt were hers : 
She was the ghoft of moonlight on the wall ! 

" I can no longer bear this loss of mine. 
Here where it came upon me : I muft go, 
Whither I know not, but to sea, to sea ; 
There is no reft, no peace for me on land. 
The winter winds may freeze me, or the isles 
Of ice may crufti my boat \ I can but die : 
But die I fhall not yet, for I muft seek 
Charon, and afk him to forego his fee ; 
Not else can reft be mine when I am dead." 
So spake the fiftier one gray winter's day, 
And ftraightway put to sea : the isles of ice 
Parted before his prow, and closed aftern ; 
Behind the noisy fliocks of spray his hut 
Grew less and less : it disappeared : the beach 
Sank in the sea : the woods alone were left. 
The long dark belt of woods, and ragged hills. 

At noon he doubled Tenarus, and beat 
Northward along Laconia's weftern fhore j 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I33 

Somewhere along the fhore, Tradition said, 

Within a gorge, the gates of Hades rose ; 

Where, no man knew : such knowledge suits not 

life. 
Death brooded round that awful fliore and sea ; 
The dreary woods were dead ; nor leaf, nor limb 
Stirred in the ftrong north wind that filled the fky : 
Beaches were none, but rocks, a wall of rock. 
With gaping caverns where the sea was loft : 
No surf, no crefted wave, no rippled swell 
Wrinkled the sea's broad plain, and yet it moved. 
Swept fhoreward like a wind. There was a gulf 
Between two barren mountains, whose black jaws 
Devoured the light : to this the current set. 
Bearing the fifher's boat ; for though his oars 
Lay on the thwarts, and all his sails were furled, 
He drove before the wind to the inner land. 
Soon as he passed that portal of the sea 
There came a change ; the thought that led him on 
Slackened ; his mind grew weak 3 a drowsy weight 
Hung on his lids : it was as he had crossed 
The leaden portals of the Land of Sleep ! 
All memory of his former life was loft. 
Sunk in his dream : only a sense of loss 
Lived in his soul, a vague and muffled grief. 
He bathed his eyes in that myfterious ftream 
To break his flumber; down his wrinkled cheek 



134 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

The water trickled, and he tafted it : 
'Twas sweet, and bitter, like forgetfulness, 
A bitter sweet : he knew the river then — 
Lethe, whose dreadful waters lead to death ! 

At laft the current emptied in the Styx, 
A fluggifh lake, whose nearer bank alone 
Was seen ; in mifl the farther bank was hid : 
He took his oars, and rowed to Charon's wharf. 
A line of sickly willows fringed the fhore. 
Their ragged tresses draggling in the scum 
That mantled the grim pool : a ghoftly rank 
Of poplars, like a halted train of fhades. 
Trembled ; on one a raven sat, and flept. 
And here and there were single ghoftly fhapes. 
That wandered up and down like morning mifts ; 
Others from somewhere inland through a gorge 
Drifted and drifted, down to Charon's wharf. 
Charon himself was in his dufky barge, 
Juft touching land 5 returned from Hades : ftill 
The furrow of his wake was on the scum. 
His beard was long and ragged, and his hair 
Hung o'er his brows ; the wrinkles of his face 
Seemed carved in bronze or flone : a ftony light 
Glinted in his hard eyes, whose fteady frown 
Looked pity dead : no pity Charon knew. 
" What man art thou ? and wherefore art thou 
come ? " 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 1 35 

" My name Is Diotimus, and my home 
Is in Laconia ; Doro was my wife : 
She died : you ferried her across the Styx." 

" Perchance, old man : but now so many cross 
I cannot long remember single souls, 
Or queens, or iifhers' wives : but get thee back : 
The dead and not the living come to me." 
So Charon said, and waved the fiflier back. 

" Not back to earth again, oh, say not that ! 
He who has lived for threescore years and ten, 
So old am I, and lived the poor man's life. 
Once freed therefrom, not willingly returns. 
From youth to age upon the dangerous sea 
My days were passed ; by suns of summer scorched. 
By winds of winter numbed : and tempefts rose. 
Great whirlwinds in the fky, and in the sea 
Chasms and gulfs of night ; but all I bore, 
For Doro Hved ; but now that flie is dead 
I long to die : there is no joy in life : 
Pity me then, and let me cross the Styx." 

" He will not pity thee^'' a fhadowy voice 
Breathed from the fhore ; " but rather mock thy grief: 
There is no mercy Jhown to men in life^ 
Why Jhould they look for any after death ? " 
Beneath the poplar where the raven sat 
This hopeless voice to Diotimus croaked : 
The raven heard, and answered in his dream. 



136 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Meantime the wandering fhapes had gathered round 

To watch the issue ; thin at firft as smoke, 

Againft the swaying willow branches drawn, 

Their dim uncertain outlines surer grew, 

Grew firm and certain : wrapt in long white robes, 

That swept the ground, and o'er their faces fell 

Hood-like, they flood : the wretched dead were they. 

That wander by the Styx an hundred years. 

" I bear the dead alone across the Styx," 

Charon replied, and smiled a grim dark smile; 

" Only the dead, nor all the dead, you see. 

Prayers have been said to me, tears have been fhed 

For ages, as ye reckon time on earth ; 

In vain : I heed not human tears or prayers ! 

Great kings have laid their sceptres at my feet. 

Pale queens have knelt to me, and wrung their hands, 

To die before their time : I sent them back ! 

What man art thou, that I should let thee cross ? 

Go back, and live the remnant of thy life : 

Live till the lords of life shall let thee die — 

It cannot now be long — then come to me ; 

Not as thou comeft now, but with the dead : 

Come with an obolus, and thou shalt cross." 

" I have no obolus, but I shall cross," 
The fisher said, " for Doro waits for me." 

Above the dead the silent willows leaned ; 
The air was hushed j except the poplar rods, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I37 

High over all, naught ftlrred : the poplars shook, 
Reached by the couriers of a coming wind. 
Or some impending doom ! A wind of doom 
Swept through the gorge behind them, driving on 
A sea of spirits, and the noise of war : 
In war two mighty kingdoms then were met ; 
These were the flower of both, flain in the shock. 
Rushing from life to death they threw themselves 
Straight into Charon's barge, or would have thrown. 
But that his oar, uplifted, kept them off. 
And now while clamor and confusion reigned, 
Unseen, the wary fisher seized his oars 
And pulled for the farther shore : before his prow 
The scum was thick, and thick the matted weeds 
Below the Aiding keel : a faint dead scent 
Burthened the wafte ; nor wave, nor ripple there. 
He tore his way through flime at every ftroke. 
Of all the flaughtered dead that ftormed his barge 
Not one would Charon ferry o'er the Styx, 
For all were yet unburied in the field ; 
He ftretched his hand in vain ; no burial fee 
Dropped in his greedy palm ; he drove them back. 
A single ghoft, a flave that died in peace, 
Wealthier with one poor obolus than they. 
Heroes, and valiant captains, kings of war, 
Stepped in the barge, and sat at Charon's feet. 
The barge was turned, and now began the chase -, 



138 SONGS OF SUMMER, 

For Charon now the fisher missed, and saw 

His laboring boat half-way across the ftream : 

He bent him to his oars, that rose and fell, 

Fafter, and fafter, raining ftrokes that shook 

The sea of scum, and dashed its turbid waves, 

Shouting great shouts to fright the daring man : 

The shouts o'ertook the fisher in his flight, 

And fright a little moment chilled his heart, 

But soon was ftrangled by the iron will 

That nerved his arm, half hope, and half despair : 

The crazy boat was ftrained in every seam. 

And flow great drops oozed through her trembling 

sides ; 
But not the less she flew, pursued by shouts, 
And frowning Charon in his gloomy barge. 

But now the mift that veiled the farther bank 
Grew thin, and thinner, and the fisher caught 
The shore beyond, a green, low-lying shore, 
Deep meadows, uplands, flopes, and happy woods 
Steeped through and through with light ; and ftately 

Shapes 
That came and went like gods : but one was flill, 
Hushed as a ftatue frozen in the moon : 
It looked a woman, and her marble eye 
Drank in that breathless chase across the Styx. 
" Doro ! " the fisher shouted, as he neared 
The happy shores the figure seemed to hear: 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 1 39 

" Doro ! dear Doro ! " — but the reft was loft, 
For Charon now had reached the fisher's boat ; 
His black barge ftruck it : down it sank like lead, 
The fisher with it : but he rose again, 
Breafting the surges to the blessed shore 
Where Doro ftood, and ftretched her hands to him. 
He lands ; she falls upon his neck, and weeps : 
Then hand in hand, their happy tears forgot. 
The smiling spirits go to meet their judge : — 
But Charon goes back, angry, to the dead ! 




140 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



GREAT AND SMALL. 

A LITTLE plot of garden ground 

Grew envious of a range of bowers, 
That caft their shade upon its flowers, 

And thus its thoughts an utterance found : 

" I envy you, ye ftately bowers, 

Your royal growths of trunk and bough, 
With all the blooms that clufl-er now 

Thereon, and those that fall in showers. 

" Far in the heavens ye lift your heads. 
Whatever wind blows, oh, ye trees ! 
But these my flowers^ — the lighteft breeze 

Dashes them on their dufty beds. 

" Within your branches lodge the birds, 
Rebuilding nefts, and chanting lays 5 
And in your shade when summer days 

Are sultry lie the drowsy herds. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I4I 



cc 



Around my ftalks the inse6ls creep ; 
Over my buds the beetles run, 
With moths that die when day is done, 
And bees that hum themselves afleep. 

" Not all unloved by me the bees, 
Draining my cups of honey dry : 
But what are they, and what am I, 

To herds, and birds, and giant trees ? " 

But Nature, liftening, " Thou art wrong ! " 
Did say reproving : — " wrong ! " the herds ; 
And " wrong ! " the many-voiced birds 

Interpolated in their song. 

" There is no difference with me," 
Was whispered in the garden's ear : 
" The smalleft blossom is as dear 

To Nature as the greateft tree. 

" The pine and oak are only flowers 

Grown large : they drink the beads of dew 
Like little violets, meek and blue. 

And battle with the ftormy powers. 

" The inse6t with its gauzy wings 
Sings, and the moth and beetle grim j 



142 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

And for the bee — I doat on him. 
And know by heart the tune he sings ! 

" Then learn this truth, the base of all, 
That all are equal, so they fill 
Their proper spheres, and do God's will 

There is no other Great or Small ! " 




SONGS OF SUMMER. ' I43 



THE POPLAR. 

I. 

The poplar-tree that guards my house 

Looks in on me to-night, 
As if it would divide my shade, 
Though based itself in light. 
Alas, poor tree ! 
It knows not me j 
A myftery few explain aright. 

II. 

It ftands out in the lamp-light there. 

And shakes its twinkling leaves ; 
And whatsoe'er the heavens may send, 
It patiently receives : 
Rain, hail, or snow. 
All winds that blow, — 
Whatever comes it never grieves ! 



III. 
For me I cannot say the like 
For I do grieve and pine ; 



144 SONGS OF SUMMER, 

There's not an hour but ftirs a pang 
In this weak heart of mine : 

Even Pleasure pains, 

And Love contains — 
How much of sorrow, though divine ! 

IV. 

Even now it fills my aching heart 

With mingled gloom, and flame ; 
And yet the poplar envies me 
My woe without a name ! 
It sees my tears, 
Conceives my fears, 
And yearns to bear the same. 

V. 

No, poplar, no ! reft where you are 
In wiser Nature's plan ; 

Man suffers so, 'tis happier 
To be a tree than man ! 
Your time will come, 
Your martyrdom : 
Till then contented, happy be. 
Nor seek to share my life with me ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I45 



MISERRIMUS. 

He has passed away 

From a world of ftrife, 
Fighting the wars of Time and Life ; 
The leaves will fall when the winds are loud,. 
And the snows of winter will weave his fhroud ; 
But he will never, ah, never know 

Any thing more 

Of leaves or snow ! 

The summer-tide 

Of his life was paft. 
And his hopes were fading, falling faft : 
His faults were many, his virtues few, 
A tempeft with flecks of heaven's blue. 
He might have soared to the gates of light, 

But he built his neft 

With the birds of night ! 

He glimmered apart 
In solemn gloom, 
10 



146 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Like a dying lamp in a haunted tomb : 
He touched his lute with a magic spell, 
But all its melodies breathed of hell, 
Raising the Afrits and the Ghouls, 

And the pallid ghofts 

Of the damned souls ! 

But he lies in duft. 

And the ftone is rolled 
Over his sepulchre dark and cold ; 
He has cancelled all he has done, or said, 
And gone to the dear and holy dead ! 
Let us forget the path he trod ; 

He has done with us : 

He has gone to God ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 347 



THE OLD MILL. 

Beside the ftream the grift-mill ftands. 
With bending roof and leaning wall ; 

So old, that when the winds are wild, 
The miller trembles left it fall : 

And yet it baffles wind and rain. 

Our brave old Mill ! and will again. 

Its dam is fteep, and hung with weeds : 
The gates are up, the waters pour, 

And tread the old wheel's flippery round, 
The loweft ftep forevermore. 

Methinks they fume, and chafe with ire. 

Because they cannot climb it higher. 

From morn to night in autumn time. 

When harvefts fill the neighboring plains, 

Up to the mill the farmers drive. 
And back anon with loaded wains : 

And when the children come from school 

They ftop, and watch its foamy pool. 



148 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

The mill inside is small and dark ; 

But peeping in the open door 
You see the miller flitting round, 

The dufty bags along the floor, 
The whirling shaft, the clattering spout, 
And the yellow meal a-pouring out ! 

■All day the meal is floating there. 
Rising and falling in the breeze ; 

And when the sunlight ftrikes its mift 
It glitters like a swarm of bees : 

Or hke the cloud of smoke and light 

Above a blacksmith's forge at night. 

I love our pleasant, quaint old Mill, 
It ftill recalls my boyifh prime ; 

'Tis changed since then, and so am I, 
We both have known the touch of time 

The mill is crumbling in decay. 

And I — my hair is early gray. 

I {land beside the ftream of Life, 

And watch the current sweep along : 

And when the flood-gates of my heart 
Are raised it turns the wheel of Song : 

But scant, as yet, the harvefl brought 

From out the golden fields of Thought ! 
1848. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. J 49 



THE SQUIRE OF LOW DEGREE. 

I. 

The royal sunlight Jiujhed the room^ 

From Jlaintd windows ftr earning down^ 
To where^ rayed round in golden gloom^ 

The old king sat^ and tried to frown. 
Before him flood his daughter dear^ 

Her white hands folded on her hreafl^ 
And in her drooping eyes a tear^ 

The sign of love^ and lovers unreft : 
For Jhe was grieved^ as only maids can he^ 
That love^ and lose^ like her^ a squire of low degree, 

[the king speaks.] 
'' To-morrow we ride with all our train 
To meet our cousin of Aquitain; 
Be ready, daughter, to go with us there, 
At the head of the train in a royal chair. 
The chair fhall be covered with velvet red. 
With a fringed canopy overhead, 
And curtains of damafk, white and blue. 



150 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Figured with lilies, and silver dew. 
Your robe muft be purple, with ermine bands, 
The fineft fur of the northern lands : 
Enamelled chains of rare device, 
And your feather a bird of Paradise ! 
And what will you have for a dainty fteed ? 
A Flanders mare of the roval breed? 
An Englifh blood ? A jennet of Spain ? 
Or a Barbary foal with a coal-black mane ? 
We ftill have the Soldan's harness, sweet : 
The housings hang to the horse's feet, 
, The saddle-cloth is sown with moons, 

And the bridle bells jingle the blytheft tunes ' 

Or will you on a palfrey go ? 

An ambling palfrey, sure and flow. 

That fhakes its head at everv tread. 

And tosses its heavy mane of snow : 

Speak, my daughter ! or will you flay. 

And make it a happy hunting day ? 

The huntsmen fhall all be gathered at dawn. 

And the hounds led out upon the lawn ; 

When you and your bevy of dames appear. 

We'll spur our fteeds, and chase the deer : 

Through meadows, through woods, away we'll go. 

And fhout while the merry bugles blow ! 

Or you fhall lead us where you will, 

Down in the valley, or up the hill : 



SONGS OF SUMMER. Jfl 

Speak, and the hawks fhall wait you there. 
And a noble quarry in the air. 
And O ! but you are a lady bright. 
On a green hill's side in the morning light 5 
Your rosy cheek by the soft wind kissed. 
And a dappled falcon on your wrift ! 
After the chase we'll feaft in the hall. 
Under the antlers on the wall ; 
The trumpet fhall wake its golden sound. 
And the butler bear the difhes round : 
Ribs of beef, so crisp and brown. 
And a jug of Rheniih to wafli it down : 
Hares, and pheasants, and venison fteaks. 
And a boar with his fkin peeling off in flakes : 
And to crown the whole, a peacock dressed, 
With its ftarry plumes, and a gilded creft. 
For you and the maids, a ftore of spice ; 
Cloves, and the seed of Paradise, 
Pots of ginger from over the seas. 
Honeycombs from the Englifh trees. 
Plums, dim-seen through their mifty ftreaks. 
And difhes of peaches with bloomy cheeks, 
Pears that smack of the sunny South, 
And cherries, as red as a maiden's mouth ! 
Grapes in salvers, with sprigs of vine. 
And wine, wine, a river of wine ; 
Ripe and old, and brave and bold. 



152 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

In cups of silver, and flagons of gold : 
Red from Bordeaux, white from the Rhine, 
Rumney, and Malmsey, and Malespine, 
Every vintage of famous vi^ine ! " 

[the PRINCESS ANSWERS.] 

"But I would rather have," said fhe, 
" My loving squire of low degree ; 
Nor gaudy trains, nor days of chase. 
Reward me for his absent face. 
They do but bring him back again. 
And all the Pad, a double pain. 
I see him now ; he is my page, 
A dreamy boy of tender age : 
His hair is long, and bright as gold. 
And in his eyes are depths untold ! 
'Tis dangerous, believe me. Sire, 

The growth of two young hearts like ours : 
We grow like flowers, and bear desire, 

The odor of the human flowers ! 
Eyes tell the tale, though lips say naught. 
And it colors the very springs of thought; 
I thought of him, and he of me. 
The daring squire of low degree ! " 

II. 

The monarch's eye with anger burns^ 
Like one who hates^ yet hears a truth ; 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I53 

Besides his own sweet youth returns^ 

And pleads^ hut he despises youth ! 
The princess kneels before his chair ^ 

And takes his heavy-hanging hand: 
He does hut smooth her ruffied hair^ 

And idle with its jewelled hand : 
And yet he loves her^ angry though he be^ 
And bribes her to forget the squire of low degree, 

[the king speaks.] 
" You fhall have a mantle, silver-green, 
With clasps of gold, and gems between ; 
A cloak of scarlet, deep as flame, 
And a v^^impled hood to match the same j 
A golden comb to crown your hair. 
Or even a crown, like this I wear. 
Or will you that every separate curl 
Shall be inlaid with a priceless pearl. 
Till you fhine like night in the ftarry hours ? 
Or will you garland your brow with flowers ? 
But your ftately throat, like a swan's afloat — 
That muft be circled with coral beads. 
Or the ruby, whose heart with passion bleeds ! 
Kerchiefs of Holland, Mechlin lace. 
And a veil like mift to hide your face 5 
Embroidered gloves, and velvet hose : 
And tippets to wrap you from the snows : 



154 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Eider fhoes, lined from the cold, 

And flippers of satin with buckles of gold. 

Nor fhall you tread on rufhes more, 

But cloth of gold fhall cover your floor ; 

And when you please to take the air, 

But name your path, and we'll spread it there. 

Your garden walks fhall be trimmed anew : 

And we'll try, if we can, to keep the dew : 

Plant new trees, of flronger fhade. 

And have the summer arbors made. 

You fhall have a fawn with a silver bell, 

A delicate fawn, that knows you well ; 

A peacock, too, of the richeft hue, 

To ftrut before you, and spread its train, 

Gay as the rainbow after rain ! 

The fountain fhall play, the swans fhall swim. 

And feed from your hand at the basin's brim : 

You fhall have a fhallop, with silken sail, 

And oars beside, if the wind fhould fail : 

Shall float on the lake, with a rippling wake. 

Shoot with the current down the ftream. 

And under the arched bridges dream. 

Or you fhall land, if it please you more. 

And have a pavilion pitched on fhore : 

Blue and white, like the fky in sight, 

A couch of down, and a dreamy light : 

An odorous silence, rapt and deep. 

And fleep, the beautiful balm of Sleep ! " 



songs of summer. i55 

[the princess answers.] 
" But I would sooner have," said £he, 
" My loving squire of low degree j 
For in his faith my soul reposes, 
Sweeter than in a bed of roses. 
Nor balmy lleep, nor happy dream. 
Nor fliallop on a summer ftream. 
Nor garden walks, nor fhaded bowers, 
No ! nor a perfe6t nefl: of flowers. 
Shall wean me from his love divine. 
Or make him any thing but mine ! 
And, as for jewels, pins, and rings. 
Mantles, and all such paltry things, 
I hold them at their proper worth, 
A subje6t for my scorn and mirth ! 
You think us children. Sire, you men : 
We want our playthings back again : 
We muft be pacified with fhow. 
We are such simpletons, you know ! 
It may be so, it may be so. 
But when the worft is known, and told. 
We cannot all be bought and sold ; 
Nor force, nor art can make us part 
From something holy in the heart — 
The bright and blessed love of old, 
The deathless love I bear to thee. 
My own dear squire of low degree ! " 



156 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

III. 

She leaned aga'inft her father's hreaji^ 

And In her sickly sorrow smiled; 
Perplexed^ diftressed^ and ill at reji^ 

He Jhoped^ and kissed his weeping child* 
Her arms around his neck Jhe drew ; 

He felt her wild heart beat^ and beat : 
His own was touched^ with pity too : 

He threw his kingdom at her feet : 
And yet he held her suppliant soul in fee ^ 
For fill he plead againji the squire of low degree. 

[the king SPEAKS.] 

" The weftern wing, by the palace gate — 
I give it to you, with all its ftate : 
Deep are the halls, broad are the ftairs, 
And tables of oak, and walnut chairs. 
With mirrors of Venice adorn the rooms. 
That are hufhed in the heart of purple glooms ! 
When the sun at his golden setting paints 
The palace-panes, and we pray to the saints. 
The Court fhall in your chapel throng. 
And hear the solemn even-song : 
Threescore singers in the choir. 
And the lips of all are touched with fire ! 
The prieft before the altar ftands. 
And lifts the Hofl with reverent hands ; 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I57 

The little faery children sing, 

And the incense burns, and the censers swing. 

And the deep-toned organ thunders round, 

Filling the aisles with a sea of sound ! 

You fhall sup with me whenever you will, 

And I'll pick you an arbor, green and ftill. 

Drape it with arras down to the floor. 

And spread your service by the door, 

That when you eat you may behold 

The knights at play, where the bowls are rolled ; 

Then you ihall to the drawbridge go. 

And watch the sportive fifh below, 

Their glancing fins, their motions free. 

Arrows of gold in a silver sea. 

A beautiful barge jQiall meet you there. 

With gilded pennons drooped in air. 

And fturdy rowers, with lifted oars, 

To pull you by the sedgy fhores : 

Step on deck, and mount your throne 

Under the purple dais alone : 

Your favored ladies, two by two. 

And the knights you name, shall follow you : 

Wave your hand, the band fhall play. 

And the rowers speed you on your way ; 

Down the river, and paft the lawn. 

And up the lake, where hides the swan ; 

Through glassy fhadows, and drifts of light, 



158 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

The bloom of eve, and the gloom of night. 

Till rises the moon, when home you turn. 

And land where the torches redly burn, 

And the garden's roof, and its leafy bars 

Glitter with cressets, like colored ftars : 

Then to your chamber, chafte, and white, 

In the silent privacy of night. 

Your room fhall be hung with curtains of snow. 

And a canopy over the couch fhall flow : 

The broidered fheet with pearls we '11 ftrew. 

Till it gleams like a lily edged with dew ! 

You shall have the finch that you desire. 

In an ivory cage with golden wire : 

It shall hang at the head of your bed, and cheep. 

And meet your eyes when they close in fleep : 

And to haften the lleep we '11 make the room 

Drowsy with shadow and perfume : 

Braziers shall melt the sweeteft gum. 

And its scent in your very dreams shall come ! 

Nay ! you shall have the ripe delight 

Of the melloweft music, all the night : 

And when the songs of the minftrels fail. 

The sweeter songs of the nightingale : 

And the heavenly ftrain will flood your brain, 

Till heaven opens before your eyes. 

And your spirit walks in Paradise ! " 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 
[the PRINCESS ANSWERS.] 

" But I would only have," said she, 
" My loving squire of low degree ; 
For I love him, and he loves me, 
And what is life when love is flown ? 
We breathe indeed, we grieve, we sigh, 
And seem to live, and yet we die : 

There is no life alone ! 
Glory is but a gilded chain. 
And joy another name for pain : 

There is no joy alone ! 
^"t joy, or pain, it matters not. 
Without my squire of low degree ; 
All things are nothing now to me. 
For I shall die, and be forgot. 
You have another daughter ftill 
To love you. Sire, and work your will ; 
For me — awaits the convent cell, 
And soon the mournful passing-bell. 
No more a princess, when you hear 
The woman's dirge, and see her bier, 
Forget your pride, and all beside, 
And but remember she was dear ! 
And when the ghoftly mass is said. 
And prayers are chanted for the dead, 
O pray that she may happy be, 
And all good souls shall pray for thee ! " 



1 59 



l6o SONGS OF SUMMER. 



IMOGEN. 

Unknown to her the maids supplied 
Her wants, and gliding noiseless round 
Passed out again, while Leon's hound 

Stole in and flumbered at her side : 

Then Cloten came, a silly ape, 

And wooed her in his boorish way. 

Barring the door againft escape ; 

But the hound woke, and flood at bay, 

Defiant at the lady's feet, 

And made the ruffian retreat. 

Then for a little momenfs space 

A smile did flit across the face 
Of Lady Imogen. 

Without the morning dried the dews 
From shaven lawns, and paftures green : 
Meantime the court dames and the queen 

Did pace the shaded avenues : 

And Cymbeline amid his train 

Rode down the winding palace walks, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. l6l 

Behind the hounds that snufFed the plain, 

And In the track of wheeling hawks ; 
And soon in greenwood shaws anear 
They blew their horns, and chased the deer. 
But Jhe nor saw^ nor heard it there^ 
But^sat^ a Jiatue of despair^ 
The mournful Imogen, 

She shook her ringlets round her head. 

And clasped her hands, and thought, and thought, 

As every faithful lady ought. 
Whose lord is far away, or dead ! 
She pressed in books his faded flowers, 

That never seemed so sweet before ; 
Upon his pi6lure gazed for hours. 

And read his letters o'er, and o'er. 
Dreaming about the loving Paft, 
Until her tears were flowing faft ! / 

With aches of hearty and aches of brain^ 
Bewildered in the realms of pain ^ 
The wretched Imogen I 

She tried to rouse herself again ; 

Began a broidery quaint and rich. 

But pricked her fingers every ftitch. 
And left in every bud a ftain ! 
She took her diftafF, tried to spin, 

II 



l62 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

But tangled up the golden thread : 
She touched her lute, but could not win 

A happy sound, her fkill had fled : 
The letters in her books were blurred, 
She could not underftand a word. 
Bewildered Ji ill ^ andftill in tears^ 
The dupe of hopes^ the prey of fear s^ 
The weeping Imogen ! 

Her curtains opened in the breeze 
And showed the flowly-setting sun. 
Through vines that up the sash did run, 

And hovering butterflies and bees. 

A silver fountain gufhed below. 

The swans superbly swam the spray : 

And pages hurried to and fro. 

And trim gallants with ladies gay. 

And many a hooded monk and friar 

Went barefoot by, in coarse attire. 

But like a pi£lure^ or a dream^ 

The outward world did only seem^ 
To thoughtful Imogen » 

When curfews rang, and day was dim, 
She glided to her chapel defk. 
Unclasped her missal arabesque. 

And sang the solemn vesper hymn : 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 1 6^ 

Before the crucifix knelt down, 

And told her beads, and ftrove to pray : 

But Heaven was deaf, and seemed to frown, 
And push her idle words away ; 

And when she touched the holy urn 

The icy water seemed to burn ! 

No faith had she in saints above y 

She only wanted human love^ 
The pining Imogen. 

The pale moon walked the wafte o'erhead, 

And filled the room with sickly light, 

And she arose in piteous phght. 
Disrobed herself, and crept to bed : 
The wind without was loud and deep. 

The rattling casements made her ftart : 
At laft she flept, but in her fleep 

She pressed her fingers o'er her heart. 
And moaned, and once she gave a scream. 
To break the clutches of a dream ! 
Even in her fleep she could not feep^ 
For ugly visions made her weep^ 
The troubled Imogen. 

1848. 



164 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE FLAMINGO. 

[in the desert.] 

Thin and pale the moon Is shining 

Where the Arab tents are spread j 
But the cloudy fky before me, 
And around the burning desert, 

Both are red ! 
And where their hues are moft like blood, 
Mirrored in the fluggish flood, 
Down the long black neck of land, 
I see the red Flamingo fland. 

That bird accurft — I saw It firll 

On a wild and angry dawn ; 
I was wakened from my flumbers 
By Zulelka's ftifled screaming — 

She was gone ! 
Stolen by a turbaned horseman. 

Mounted on a barbso black : 
I saw her garments waving white. 
And I followed, day and night. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 165 

In the red Flamingo's track. 
Three whole moons have I pursued it, 

With a swift and noiseless tread ; 
Like a dreamer whom the demons 
With a baleful lamp are leading 

To the dead ! 
Happy are the dead ! But I, 
I can never, never die. 

Until my hands are red I 
But red they will be soon. 
For I turn my back upon the moon, 
And follow the bird, that doubles its speed. 
Eager to see the horseman bleed. 
And dabble its beak, as I my hands. 
In the blood that shall crimson the desert sands ! 




l66 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE SERENADE OF MA-HAN-SHAN. 

[china.] 

I. 

Come to the window now, beautiful Yu Ying ! 
The new moon is rising, white as the shell of a pearl : 
Your honored father and brother 

And the guefts are flill at table, 
Tipping the golden bottles — 

But I have ftolen to you ! 
The rose looks over the wall 

To see who passes near : 
Look out of the window, you, 
And see wh® waits below. 
I am a Mandarin : my plume is a pheasant's feather : 
The lady who marries me may live at court, if she 
likes. 

n. 
I ftood by the pond to-day ; hundreds of lilies 

bloomed ; 
And the wonderful keung-flower grew in the midft 
of all. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 167 

Whenever that marvel happens ' 

A wedding is sure to follow : 
It refts with you, Yu Ying, 

Speak ! is the wedding ours ? 
We will dwell in Keang-Nan, 

For I have a palace there ; 
My garden is leagues in length, 
Deer run wild in the parks : 
Cages of loories, macaws j lakes of Mandarin ducks : 
And a lane bordered with peach-trees : all for sweet 
Yu Ying. 

III. 
What means this wonderful light ? has a second 

moon arisen ? 
'Tis Yu Ying at her window ! A miUion of thanks, 
Yu Ying! 
Drop me your fan for a gift. 

Or, better, a tress of your hair : 
It is but little to give. 

For I have given my heart ! 
The fire-flies twinkle, twinkle. 

Under the cypress boughs : 
They are wedding each other to-night. 
The lights are their wedding lanterns ! 
When shall I order ours, and come in the flowery 

chair ? 
Name me the pearl of a day, my bride, my wife, Yu 
Ying! 



l68 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE SLEDGE AT THE GATE. 

[LAPLAND.] 

I WOULD run this arrow flralght Into my heart 
Sooner than see what I saw to-night ! 

I harnessed my rein-deer, mounted the fledge, 
And fkimraed the snow by the northern light : 

The thin ice crackled, the water roared, 
But I crossed the fiord : 

I reach the house when the night is late, 

What's this ? a deer, and a fledge at the gate ! 

the eyes of Zela are winter springs! 
But the wealth of summer is in her hair; 

But she loves me not, she is false again : 

Or why are the fledge and the rein-deer there ? 

1 throw myself down, face-firfl in the snow : 

" Let the false one go ! " 
She never shall know my love, or my scorn, 
For I shall be frozen flifF in the morn ! 

The sharp winds blew, and my limbs grew chill : 
I knew no more till I felt the fire. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 1 69 

They rubbed my breaft, and they rubbed my hands, 

And my life came back, like a dark desire. 
She spake kind words, and smoothed my hair. 

But the fledge was there ! 
^^ Ah false ^ hut fair ! " — it was all I said, 
I ftruck her down, and away I fled ! 

I mounted my fledge, and the rein-deer flew, 
In the wind, in the snow, in the blinding fleet : 

The snow was heavy, the wind like a knife. 
And the ice like water under my feet. 

The wolves were hungry — they scented my track — 
But I fought them back! 

I fear neither wolves, nor the winter's cold. 

For the faithless woman has made me bold ! 



w 



170 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



THE GRAPE GATHERER. 

[ITALY.] 

Well, I have met you, cousin, 

Where not a soul can see : 
What do you want ? " You love me ? " 

You trifle, Sir, with me. 
You love that grape-girl yonder — 

The one againft the wall : 
She climbs, and climbs ; but have a care, 

A ftep, and she may fall. 
You walked with her this morning, 

Her bafket on your head : 
" 'Twas better than my coronet," 

Or something so, you said : 
''And the grapes and yellow tendrils 

Tangled in her hair, 
Were brighter than my ringlets. 

And all the pearls I wear! " 
You should have seen her lover, 

Hid in the vines hard by ; 
A swarthy, black-browed fellow, 

With a devil in his eye : 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I7I 

He clutched his grape-hook fiercely. 

And, but that I were near. 
He would have llain you, cousin. 

And will some night, I fear. 
You think she loves you only ! 

And so thought all the reft : 
Why, you had hardly left her 

Before the Count was bleft ! "'■ 

You doubt ? Pray afk her sifter. 

Or afk the jilted swains ; 
Or watch, when she's not watching, 

'Twill well be worth your pains. 
I should be very angry^, 

'Tis so unworthy you : 
But since you say "you jefted," 

I muft forgive, and do. 
I own I love you somewhat ; 

But ere you marry me. 
You muft do one thing, cousin — 

Let my grape gatherers be ! 



W 



172 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



SICILIAN PASTORAL. 

The nefts In spring were full of bluish eggs, 
In summer full of birds : now autumn comes 
The nefts are empty, and the birds are gone. 

The soft white clouds are flecked, the iky is bound 
With belts of swallows, ftretching from the weft 
To where the eaft is girded in with haze. 

Stay ! swallows, ftay ! the land is near and bright, 
The sea is far, and dark, and perilous. 
And all beyond is ahen, and unknown. 

Why should ye fly so soon ? why fly at all. 
When ye might ftay with us the long year through. 
And be in deathless summer all the time ? 

Here all the vales are full of dewy flowers. 
The orchard plots are full of juicy fruits. 
The endless purple woods are full of balm ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. J 73 

Stay ! swallows, flay ! the flowers, and fruit, and 

balm 
Will fade and die, when ye have left the isle, 
And winds will moan the absence of your songs ! 

Stay ! swallows, flay ! and hear the laft year's birds : 
" JVe Jiew o'er many an isle where summer broods^ 
But found no summer-land like Sicily I " 

They will not hear : we wafle our words in air : 

We might as well go chatter to the crows : 

The crows would hear us, though they meant to go. 

Go ! swallows, go ! and be it all your doom 
To bear the memory of what ye leave — 
For memory will cancel half the sin : 

And be it all your punifhment to sing 

In tropic islands of Sicilian sweets. 

And shame the tropic birds with summer songs ! 



174 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



[PERSIA.] 

We parted in the ftreets of Ispahan. 
I flopped my camel at the city gate ; 
Why did I ftop ? I left my heart behind. 

I heard the sighing of thy garden palms, 

I saw the roses burning up with love ; 

I saw thee not : thou wert no longer there. 

We parted in the flreets of Ispahan. 

A moon has passed since that unhappy day ; 

It seems an age : the days are long as years ! 

I send thee gifts by every caravan; 

I send thee flafks of attar, spices, pearls ; 

I write thee songs on golden-powdered scrolls. 

I meet the caravans when they return. 

" What news ? " I afk : the drivers fhake their heads 

We parted in the ftreets of Ispahan. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 1 75 



THE SEARCH FOR PERSEPHONE. 

BOOK II. 

" Proserpine gathering flowers^ 
Herself a fairer flower^ by gloomy Dis 
Was gathered^ which cofi Ceres all that pain 
To seek her through the world. ''^ 



No more of rural song and paftoral, 

Profuse or ftudied, but a higher ftrain ; 

Thee now I woo, divine Melpomene : 

Thou didft inspire tragedians grave, of eld, 

To sing of Godlike suffering, and embalm 

In monumental verse the woe of Gods ; 

Much did they sing, but much remains unsung. 

And chief Demeter's woe, which now is mine. 

O help me, as thou didft thine elder bards j 

Order the lofty numbers, build the ftyle 

In naked and severe simplicity. 

And lift my spirit to the argument, 

Which deepens soon to tragic. Breathe through me, 

Voiceless myself, and thine be all the wreaths. 



176 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Where is Demeter now ? what troubled look 

Burthens her face, what solemn words the air ? 

Demeter ftands beside the spring which rose 

Where Aides vanifhed with Persephone : 

Of port superior to the loftiefl: 

Of mortal mould, in Queen, or Amazon 

Renowned, the light and pillar of the sex ; 

Deep-bosomed, and white-limbed, a supreme Shape. 

Her face is pale with sorrow, yet she wears 

Her sorrow grandly, like a diadem, 

Nor other crown, though Goddess of the Earth, 

Except the simple tiar of golden hair 

Coiled round her brow, an orbed peak of thought. 

Her voice is sadder than an autumn wind 

In a lone land, not shrill, nor full of gufts. 

But equal, and deep-toned, blown from all points. 

" I have been liftening, wrapt in searching thought. 
To what, in trembling words, the nymphs revealed. 
But where my child has gone, I cannot tell ; 
My foresight failed me here, my knowledge fails. 
Wisdom will come, till when its place usurped 
Is filled by grief. Perchance some River God 
Hath ftolen my child, whom he will soon return, 
Unharmed, for fear of me, so potent I. 
This fountain muft be queftioned. Answer me, 
Soul of this coil of foamy turbulence, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 1 77 

Whether thou art beneath the wide, wafte sea. 

With great Poseidon, and his finny train. 

Or in the deeps of Earth, in caves obscure, 

Up-haftening to the light, at this, my call. 

Speak, answer me, where is Persephone I 

Thou haft beheld, and ftolen her away. 

Thou, or some other spirit mischievous. 

Whose portal of retreat was opened here. 

Where is my daughter ? If I speak again. 

The Earth will draw thy fountain to its source,. 

And caft thee from her bosom. Answer me! 

In vain, in vain : the fountain hath no God,. 

And cannot answer ; Godless let it be, 

Stormy and bitter to the end of time. 

But you, ye lesser spirits of the vale^ 

Cannot escape, I here compel ye all ^ 

From rivers, brooks, and springs, you Naiads,, come, 

With Napeads from the vale ; and from the grove 

The Meliads, who here for lack of flocks 

Muft tend the fruit ; and you, ye Oreads, 

Both from the valley and the mountain mifts ; 

Hither, and tell me of Persephone." 

The Goddess thus, and even as she spake. 
From rivers, brooks^ and springs the Naiads came. 
With water Hlies tangled in their hair ; 
The Napeads from the vale in fkirts of grass, 

12 



lyg SONGS OF SUMMER. 

The Meliads with their white hands full of fruit ; 
And all the Oreads from the fhifting mifts, 
Wringing their dewy tresses on the lawn ; 
Obedient to the power that summoned them, 
They thus made answer in their several turns. 

" We are the Naiads of the neighboring ftreams ; 
Below their wrinkled waves we live in grots, 
Paven with furrowed sands ; the fhelvy rocks 
Our thrones, our couches beds of humid moss. 
We ftrain the water through our golden hair : 
With flowers we sow the bottom, and with weeds 
Whose blooms are full of winds. We love the fifh 
Whose little coats are fleek with glittering scales : 
The plated turtles, and defiant crabs. 
That lie, or crawl beneath the grayifh ftones. 
The long-legged beetles fkimming o'er the waves. 
With other watery inse6ls, are our care : 
We know and love the leaft : but as we hope 
To keep our silver urns forever full. 
We all are ignorant of Persephone." 

" But I," said one, the Naiad of a lake, 
" I saw the nymph, and fhe was lovelier 
Than all my lilies, whiter than my swans ; ^ 
But where fhe hides I know not, or may fires 
Shed from the Dog-Star dry my fountains up. 
And leave me fhelterless on burning sands." 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 1 79 

''And we," the drooping Napeads began, 
" Surrounded by her train we saw the nymph 
Trip down the vale. We woke the early flowers, 
And turned the dew from their enamelled cups ; 
Not one but wanted to resign its life 
Beneath her feet : to die such death were sweet : 
She walked as lightly as the winds of Spring." 

" The winds of Spring," the Meliads broke, and 
joined 
The broken thread of speech, " the winds of Spring 
Blow in old Winter's teeth, and rouse the buds ; 
The winds of Summer overtake the Spring, 
And swell the buds to fruit : both are our care. 
We screen the buds with leaves, remove the worms. 
And drive away the bees, and angry wasps ; 
We feed the fruit with sun, and wind, and dew ; 
The rinds of some we gild, and some we kiss, 
And leave our breath thereon in bluifh mift. 
We saw at dawn the nymph Persephone 
Loft in our orchards ; figs, and plums, and pears 
Lay round in heaps ; we rained the olives down. 
The red pomegranates split, and pierced the myrrh. 
And manna-tree whose veins are full of balm ! 
With many a sweet delay the virgin passed. 
But where {he hides we know not, or may blight 
Shrivel our leaves, the north winds nip our buds, 



l80 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

And worms deftroy our fruit, henceforth to be 
More rich and luscious than in other years ! " 

" We dwell in mifts," began the Oreads next ; 
" In vale and mountain mifts ; a ftreak of gold 
Betrays our presence there ; in hollow glens 
We couch when dews are dried : among the hills, 
From peak to peak, we float across the gulfs. 
And leap in cataracts down the untouched crags. 
May all our dews and exhalations fail. 
But we are ignorant of Persephone." 

" Infirm, and idle ! wherefore do ye live, 
If not to see, and succour Excellence, 
When Excellence may need your timely aid ? 
Is it for this that Earth's maternal care 
Prote6ts, and clasps ye to her loving heart ? 
For this Heaven holds ye in its sacred charge ? 
But thou, O Earth ! great Mother of Mankind ! 
If these, thine own appointed miniftrants, 
Negle6t their calling, thou fhouldfl: rise thyself, 
And save the heavenly ones whose lives are thine. 
And unto thine add joy, and length of days. 
Back to your homes, and little tafks again. 
Ye spirits of this dark, accursed vale. 
And leave me in my loneliness alone ! 
To be a Goddess now avails me not, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. iSl 

Nor yet to have a Goddess for my child. 
With fleepless eyes the island muft be searched ; 
Obscure and wild the dark retreat muft be 
For me to fear ; a mother's eyes are keen, 
A mother's heart is ftrong to save her child. 
Farewell ye groves of Enna, where we dwelt ! 
Farewell, ye meadows ! when I come again, 
I bring Persephone, or come no more." 

Thus spake Demeter as fhe crossed the vale 
To search its northern bounds, which lovelier grew 
At every ftep, the home and haunt of Spring. 
Through groves and orchards full of piping birds. 
That dropped from bough to bough, like falling buds, 
Through emerald meadows sown with silver dew, 
And golden paftures resonant with bees. 
The Goddess passed, with keen and anxious eyes 
Perusing all ; nor did ftie cease to call 
" Persephone ! " — but trace of her was none. 
Save in her fhoutings, which the vale retained. 
As hollow fhores the voice of ebbing seas. 
Then through a gorge along the eaft fhe went 
The mountains on her right fledged with dark pines. 
And on her left the long Nebrodian range. 
The craggy barriers of the northern fky ; 
The wind blew downward from their summit snows 
Freighted with winter, and the melting mift, 



l82 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Heavy and damp, rolled up and down the gorge j 
And up and down the gorge the Goddess went. 
Scanning the figures fhrouded in the mift ; 
And one by one the Hours with solemn pace 
Did come and go, and Morning was no more. 

There was a wild and desolate ravine 
That wound along the bottom of the pass ; 
Its mifty sides were dark with fliaggy woods, 
And from its verge, headlong, a river plunged 
Through clouds of spray, deep down a troubled lake. 
Dammed up with rocks, down which it plunged 

again. 
In ragged catara6ts, sullen and hoarse ; 
A narrow pathway coiled on rocky fhelves. 
With fteep descents traversed the precipice : 
Down this with wary feet Demeter trod, 
And searched the old and melancholy woods 
Burthened with endless fhade, and solitude. 
And searched the clouded lake, and waterfall. 
And all the cavernous bases of the hills. 
Deep-sunk in earth ; no nook, nor secret cleft, 
In which a spotted adder and her brood 
Could coil away, escaped her fharpened eye. 
That found no traces of Persephone ; 
So up the pass with flow and toilsome fteps 
She clomb again, and reached at laft a plain 
That ftretched along the weil, and flept in light. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 183 

Till now nor sight nor sound of man appeared, 
But now at intervals fhepherds were seen. 
And notes of fhepherd's flutes were heard afar. 
Here dwelt a pafloral race that worfhipped Pan, 
Nor far the Goddess journeyed ere fhe found 
A group around his altar ; reverent swains 
With sacrificial goats, and pious maids 
With urns of honey wreathed in sprigs of pine ; 
And in their midft the venerable Prieft : 
Deep awe pervaded all as thus fhe spake. 

" Shepherds ! since dawn the nymph Persephone 
By hoftile force from Enna has been ta'en ; 
If any man has seen her, let him speak. 
Let him not fear, but speak, and name her path. 
We both are kind to you, nor love you less 
Than if you worfhipped us, inflead of Pan ; 
Witness the bees I charmed from Hybla here. 
When lafl the sun flamed in the vernal signs, 
With all that fhall hereafter come of good 
To him, whose happy knowledge touching her — 
If any such there be — lightens my heart j 
Good, if he speak, evil, if he speak not. 
To him, and all his kindred after him ; 
But such there cannot be. Speak ! shepherds, speak ! " 

The Goddess thus, and paused, but none replied, 



184 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

So deep the dread that fell upon all hearts ; 

At length the Prieft ventured with faltering tongue. 

" O great Demeter ! Goddess of the Earth ! 

Impute not sin to silence, neither charge 

Thy loss to us, participants therein — 

For who but suffers when the good are wronged ? 

Forgive our ignorance of Persephone, 

And elsewhere let thy juft displeasure fall." 

To whom Demeter mild, and sad, returned ; 
" Old man ! 'twould ill become the race divine. 
Divine no less through juftice, than through power, 
Inftead of Wrong, to punifh Ignorance. 
For if the Gods unjuft and cruel prove, 
How fhall their worfhippers be good and kind ? 
But fear not that ; lifted above the world. 
No mortal frailties their perfections mar. 
Though sad at heart, right glad am I withal 
To see ye love and reverence the Gods ; 
No grateful heart enjoys the leaft of gifts 
Without returning to the giver thanks, 
And offering in return the befl: it can. 
Not that the Gods are ever paid thereby. 
For what to them are honey, goats, or bulls ? 
They need them not, nor need they hymns of praise. 
For they are all sufficient in themselves ; 
Yet dear to them the clouds of sacrifice. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 185 

That waft above the prayers of thankful hearts ; 
It is their due, the makers of mankind." 

Thus through her grief accents of wisdom fell. 
Assured thereby they bowed, and worfliipped her : 
But mindful of her search, too long delayed, 
She journeyed o'er the plain with added speed. 
Till many-wooded Etna came in sight, 
And the hot sun rounded the arch of Noon, 
Descending to its weftern base of sea. 

Ten leagues from Enna blue Simetos rolled 
Through osier banks his current to the main. 
Bathing her burning forehead in the waves. 
She saw the image of the River God, 
Obliquely mirrored in a bed of reeds ; 
Him fhe addressed, and at her call he rose. 
With dripping locks crowned with a wreath of sedge. 
" Son of Oceanos ! whom ocean owns 
No longer for its God, but ft ill doth hide 
In some deep cavern, while Poseidon rules 
His sovereignty of sea — beloved of both. 
Divine Simetos ! if thou haft beheld 
Since early dawn the nymph Persephone, 
Stolen from Enna by some Power unknown, — 
Haply from spring, or ftream, or far-off" main. 
Unfold what thou doft know : or knowing naught 



l86 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Since I would cross thy current in my search. 
Draw back thy waters to their mountain source 
And let me pass ; so may the mountain snows 
Fail not to brim thy fountain, and thy mates, 
Camsorus, Chrysos, and bright Eryces, 
Empty their urns of tribute at thy feet." 

" O great Demeter ! Mother of the Earth ! 
Sower of seed, and source of fruitfulness ! 
With grief I hear thy melancholy voice. 
Laden with loss, which I cannot repair. 
For naught hath passed since dawn. I will draw back 
My current to its source, and let thee cross." 

Thus he, and northward buffeted the waves. 
Till loft around the river's weftward curve ; 
Reaching its source he sealed its secret urn. 
And ftayed the current, which rolled on below, 
And left a gulf, through which the Goddess passed. 
With unwet sandals over waves of grass. 
Through rounded walls of cryftal, rolling down 
Tumultuous in her rear, in crumbled foam. 
That ftiut the pass, and followed in her path. 
Until fhe gained the river's eaftern bank. 
And fhouted to Simetos, who unsealed 
The dripping urn, when all the waters closed. 
And sought the sea again, as ftie her child. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 187 

Her path now wound about the southern base 
Of Etna, doping to the river's edge ; 
Here Polyphemos fed his numerous flock, 
That lay Hke drifts of snow in dreamy vales, 
Until Demeter's fhadow, dark and tall. 
Searching the uplands chased them o'er the hills ; 
All fled in fear, save one whose lamb was loft, 
A fearless ewe, that to the Goddess came. 
And made its sorrow known with piteous tears ; 
She would have left it in the fields, but lo ! 
It followed her, and bleated for its lamb. 
So towards the sea they went, and reached at laft 
Its rippled margent, where the Cyclops lay. 
Under a ledge of rocks that made a cave j 
Beside his feet a nameless river ran. 
Now named and known from Acis, buried there. 
Here Polyphemos languifhed in the sun ; 
Like some rude idol dufk barbarians 
Adore no longer, tumbled from its base. 
Thrice did the Goddess ihout a mighty fhout 
Above his couch, before he ftirred a limb, 
Then flow, and sullen, he arose and frowned j 
But fhe ftood calm as Thought, nor feared his 
ftrength. 

" O Polyphemos ! great Poseidon's son ! 
Nobleft of all the Cyclopean race ! 



]88 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Shepherd of Etna, and its thousand flocks, 

From thee, Demeter claims a patient ear. 

Attentive to her sorrow and despair. 

That seek the footprints of Persephone, 

Stolen from Enna by some wanton Power 3 

Not thee fhe fain would hope, since thou art great, 

And fhould'jft be kind, for kindness is the ftar 

That crowns all greatness, therefore crowneth thee. 

If thou haft harmed not her defenceless child. 

Sunk, as thou seem'ft, in sorrow and despair. 

From ills unknown to her, for which nathless 

She grieves, and pities thee, as thou doft her, 

Meaning to tell her of Persephone ; 

Till when fhe waits, a-hungered for thy voice." 

Thus with wise words, like oil upon the sea 
Swollen with ftorm, fhe laid his rising ire. 
And smoothed his rugged features to a calm. 

" Not I," he said, " not I have done this thing, 
Whoever may ; not I go ftealing maids : 
I live, and die, for Galatea alone. 
Why, I have lain all night in falling dew. 
And sang of Galatea to every ftar ; 
And I have fhouted from the cloven peaks 
Until the Thunder answered from his cave. 
While ftartled Lightnings glared from parting clouds ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 189 

" O Galatea ! divineft Galatea ! 
Well I remember when I saw thee firft ! 
'Twas when at noon I lay along the bank 
Of blue Simetos, where my thirfty flock 
Crowded and pufhed until the lamb fell In, 
To drown, but for thy help, so ftrong the tide 
That bore it out beyond my reaching crook, 
But not beyond those delicate hands of thine, 
Reaching from out the lilies that concealed 
Thy whiter breaft, to which the lamb was drawn. 
Bleating for joy, and safely borne afhore. 
Beneath thy loosened hair, that hke a veil 
Fell to thy feet, and sowed a fhower of pearl ! 
O Cyclops ! Cyclops ! it were well for thee. 
Had thy one eye been blinded like Orion's, 
Or ever thou hadft seen that fatal sight ! 

" But hearken yet, Demeter, let me speak. 
And I will guide thee to the mountain path 
That winds about the forges of Hephaestos. 

"Again at noon fhe came, and fed the lamb 
With handfuls of long grass, and wove the flowers 
To crown her dripping tresses while I went 
Through Hybla, drumming on the hollow oaks 
Swarming with bees, till I had filled my cup 
With lucent honey, which I gave to her j 



IQO SONGS OF SUMMER. 

For then flie did not fear to let me sit 

Beside her feet, nor fear my gifts of love ; 

But when fhe left me, floating like a swan 

To seek the sea again, blew kisses back ! 

Had I been bleft with fins, like happy fifti, 

I would have followed in her glittering wake, 

And scared away the amorous River Gods ; 

But had I been a River God myself, 

I would have dived to her in the cold deeps ; 

Be sure I had not failed to find her there. 

For ruffled waves are clear as air to me ; 

And oft, at noon, I watched her rising flow 

Through fhimmering leagues of water, like a ftar. 

" I gave her ten young fawns as black as night. 
Soft-eyed, and delicate, with silver feet. 
With each a collar, and a chain of pearl. 
She clapped her hands for joy, and smoothed my 

cheek 
Until I laughed, and wept : her hands were soft ; 
But mine are rougher than the mountain briars ! 

"But hearken flill, and let me speak again. 
For now I touch upon my grief, and loss. 
Which had not been but for another's love 
Thruft in between mine own and Galatea, 
Whom all the shepherds worshipped, but afar, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. IQI 

Till Acis came, and spake. How did he dare 
Step in between the Cyclops, and his love ? 
And how could ftie endure his boyifh face 
Half-hid in yellow ringlets, after me, 
Whose mighty heart pulsed fire at every beat ! 

'' But let me speak again, and I have done. 
I sat, last eve, upon the flope of hills. 
What time the sunset tipped, as now, the woods. 
And saw a double fhadow on the mead. 
Two fhadows clasped in one, with kissing hps ; 
'Twas Acis, and the faithless Galatea. 
They were too busy then to think of me. 
But I — I saw them there, and spake no word, 
But crept in silence, up from peak to peak. 
Till, with sore labor, ftraining all my ftrength, 
I lifted from its bed a crag of rock. 
And caft it down upon the dreaming fools. 
Thinking to crufh them both, nor had I failed. 
But that its falling fhadow like a cloud 
Startled the nymph, who suddenly leaped aside 
To see him crufhed, and buried, where he ftood. 
Jammed in the hard cold earth, despite his moans ; 
Nor might her tears, which fell around like rain, 
Nor all her prayers, reftore him to her arms. 
Unless ihe found him in the turbid ftream 
Which guflied from out the rock, and followed her. 
Flying with fhrieks of terror to the sea ! 



192 SONGS OF- SUMMER. 

" But come, Demeter, let us rise and go ; 
The lean gray wolves will soon begin to prowl, 
And I muft pen my flocks; but let us go." 

Thus Polyphemos told his tale of love : 
And spying at his feet the bleating ewe. 
He lifted it with care in his rough arms. 
And led the Goddess from the foamy beach, • 
Full to the weft again, where now the Sun 
Had plunged his broad red disc in seas of cloud. 

1851. 




SONGS OF SUMMER. 



193 



THE BURDEN OF UNREST. 

I. 

From our bridal chamber, deareft, we belioH the- 
ftretch of bay ; 
From the window watch the sunset, mirrored on 
its glassy floor : 
Here in brightness, there in fliadow, trace the fading 
fteps of Day, 
Fainting in the weft behind us, dying on the solemn 
fhore. 
Splendors on the liquid surface, isles of purple, waves 
of gold ; 
On the peaks of cloudy mountains ftreaks of red 
and lurid fires. 

Blackening, as the eve expires, 
Like December's lateft embers turning now to aflies 

cold. 
Kiss me ere I lose you wholly, in the darkness mel- 
ancholy ; 
Through the gloom that gathers round us leave 
your little hand in mine : 

13 



194 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Now grow dimmer, Night ! and glimmer, 

Till the ftars begin to fhine : 
We are folded from the darkness in a cloud of light 
divine ! 

II. 

Are you happy, sweeteft ? Do you in your spirit 
feel serene ? 
I am saddened, I am reftless, and I feel the touch 
of tears ; 
Not for any recent sorrow, but the season, and the 
scene, 
And the yet remembered burden of my desolated 
years ! 
You are happy, I can see it, dawning on your pallid 
cheek. 
And your clasping hand confesses all my love 
desires to know ; 
So I pray you, while you liften, let my troubled spirit 
speak. 

And in .words relieve its woe. 
I am not of those who babble, be my suffering what 
it may ; 
Not for me poetic whining ; all such weakness I 
despise : 
With my nature wrapt around me I pursue my silent 
way, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I95 

While a vague but settled purpose hardens in my 
dreamy eyes ! 
Yet the silence weighs upon me, and the night de- 
mands a tongue ; 
Therefore let me speak, my darling ! even let my 
soul complain ; 
Years of utter silence give me right to speak what 
will relieve me. 

Right to babble like the young, 
Since it will relieve my pain : 
Hear me, then, and my confession fhall not trouble 
you again ! 

III. 

I. 

Ah ! that bitter, bitter burden ! who besides myself 

has known it? 
From a myriad I was singled for its miniftry and 

doom : 
None that bear it, if there be such, have the honefty 

to own it J 
Living they are voiceless, and voiceless is the tomb ! 
I that bore it, I that bear it, hardly underftand it yet ; 
'Tis not easy to see clearly through the diftance of 

regret. 
Firft were longings, vague and hopeless as the glances 

caft above, 



196 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

When the moon and ftars are fhining in the infinite 
of night ; 

Then a dream of something bright ; 
'Twas the bliss, the sorrow — Love! 
With love my dreams grew clear, and from out their 
fkirts of mift, 
Clad in robes of white, came a bevy of fair girls ; 
Each a fairy princess, a fairy lover kissed. 

On her drooping eyelids, on her golden curls. 
And the red mouth, dropping pearls ! 
From sweet lips plucking kisses, from bright eyes 
drinking flame, 
From warm hearts hoarding passion, what heart 
had I for care ? 
A cavalier of olden time, my love a noble dame. 

While lavifli Fancy built me a caftle in the air ! 
To airy jousts and tournaments I rode in gallant fhow ; 
No matter who opposed me, I cleared the tented 

field i 
A lady's favor on my creft, a heart upon my fhield, 
A bleeding heart below ! 

2. 

I was young, that was the reason, why my fancy was 
so wild ; 
And 'tis natural to love, in the simpleness of 
youth j 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I97 

Even in manhood, if it keepeth any remnant of 
its truth : 

Surely then it was a trifle, in a child ! 
Nay, though I have learned to hate it, w^ith a hoft of 
weighty reasons, 
(Holding true to its Ideal, in the midft of all my 
hate !) 
There are none, I think, exempted, none but suffer 
in their seasons. 

Loved and loving, soon or late. 
Loveless, friendless, from the firfl, and with solitude 
accurft. 

My soul did sigh, and moan : 
I wanted some one near me, some loving one to 
cheer me ; 
For who can cheerful be, or good, or human, when 

alone ! 
Mine eyes went searching round, for something never 
seen. 

By either Night, or Day ; 
I ftretched my arms to clasp my fancy's queen. 

That paragon of clay ! 
I ftretched my loving arms, and clasped her in my 
fleep. 
Wound myself about her In a coil of fire ; 
And my hot lips kissed her with passionate desire. 
Brow, and face, and bosom, until I woke to weep ' 



198 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

3- 

Thrilling with my youthful, longings, which antici- 
pated thee, 
Dreams were mine of bridal chambers, and they 
colored all my song ; 
Like the rosy hues of evening, settling yonder on the 
sea. 
Blending with the waves, v/hose motion wafts the 
dying flame along! 
But my songs were of the senses, running over with 

desire j 
Dim seragHos in the tropics, fteeped in all their 

bloom and fire j 
Shaded lamps, and burning odors ; flagons of the 
ripefl wine ; 
Purple curtains, downy couches, and sultannas 

veiled in tresses ; 
Sighing rapture, ihowering kisses, intertwining laft 
caresses. 

And the ecfl:asv divine. 
Is it any wonder, dearefl, now the madness is con- 
fefl. 
Now the road again is traversed, every bramble, 
every thorn. 

Where the feet of youth were torn, 
That my burning years were wafted with the Burden 
of Unreft ? 



SONGS OF SUMMER. I99 

IV. 

When the flower of youth is on us, and the heart of 
youth is warm, 
And the passions are awakening with the warranty 
of heaven, 

Sins of passion may be looked for : will not do us 
any harm ; 

Muft be overlooked, forgiven ! 

God himself is Love, they tell us ; surely he'll for- 
give us then : 

Punifh all who err in loving, you deftroy the race of 
men ! 

Loving, I muft not be fettered, but muft rove where 
e'er I please ; 

You, dear women, are but flowers, we, poor men, 
are only bees ! 

As for me, I am a poet, with the fulleft license here ; 

Favorite of the gods, they wink at all my peccadil- 
loes dear : 

But 'tis none for me to love you, for- 1 never do you 
wrong ; 

If I rob you of your honey, don't I pay you with my 
song ? 

Tufh ! no virtuous surprise. 

You are willing, there's a witness in your dear con- 
senting eyes ! 

Like a Bacchante wild with revel, intertangled in a 
vine, 



200 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

With his flagons running over till his feet are deep 

in wine — 
Oh, what days of fiery passion, oh, what wafting 

nights were mine ! 



V. 
I. 

I lived the life the gods live, so beautiful and ftrong ; 
So right in all its sweetness, in all its sin so wrong : 
The life that youth delights in, and lives, but lives 

not long ; 
For either falls a darkness that palls upon the clay. 
Or comes the King of Darkness, and bears the soul 

away ! 
Nor know I which is saddeft, the dying, and the 

tomb, _ 

Or the living, and the doom ! 

2. 

By the hell within my bosom, I am hurried to and 

fro ; 
Juft to see the waters flowing, juft to hear the breezes 

blow : 
Whether I am crufhing flowers, whether wading in 

the snow, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 201 

Know I never : no such knowledge will avail my 

foolifh woe ! 
Up and down the noisy city, in its dufty, crowded 

flree^Sj 
Where its ocean of exiftence on the ftony pavement 

beats ; 
When the sun from morn to even flounders in a 

wafte of clouds ; 
When the sickly lamps are flickering, dying in their 

ftormy fhrouds : 
In a fhroud of anguifh walking, like a corpse that 

fhould be dead. 
Or a dreamer in his flumbers, by a horrid phantom 

led; 
(Through the dim, myfterious chambers, up the 

spirit-haunted ftairs, 
Down the house-top, while the watchers hufh their 

unavailing prayers !) 
Up and down the silent city, through the dreary 

blank of walls ; 
Where the houses drift forever, where the ftarless 

fhadow falls ! 

3- 

Weary is exiftence, will it never end ? 

Shall I never know it — death's eternal fleep ? 

Death ! I have no other, won't you be my friend ? 

I cannot live so longer ! I cannot even weep ! 



202 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

VI. 
1. 

Weep ? and wherefore fhould I ? Grief is unavail- 

And tears are not for manhood ; we miift not whine 
like boys : 
The malice of our natures is ancient, and unfailing ; 
The gods are jealous of us, their images and toys ! 
They sit up in the clouds there, and do whate'er 

they please. 
While men walk in the duft here, and follow their 

decrees ! 
And I am one among ye, ye myriads of men, 

Though not like ye in essence, nor like ye curft 
and bleft : 
For ye in alternation may weep, and smile again. 

While I am always laden with burdens of unreft. 
What have ye done, what do ye, unless indeed your 
worft. 
Ye many as the grasses, or billows of the main ? 
But billows flow, and grasses grow, as ordered from 
the firft; 
But ye, how are ye growing ? What learn ye 
here, save pain ? 

2. 

Ye live upon a grand old world in unimagined space -, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 2O3 

Beneath ye verdant continents, the heaving seas 
around j 
Above, a hoft of flarry Hghts that ftare ye in the face. 
Or would, indeed, but that your eyes are fixed 
upon the ground ! 
Why ftare ye on the ground so, when ftars are in 
the fky ? 
Is it to watch the spring-flowers that twinkle in 
the mold? 
Not so : nor think ye of your graves, though Death 
is ever nigh. 
But only of the gold beneath, the cursed, cursed 
gold ! 
When ye were boys, my brothers, in the merry years 
of old. 
There was a pomp and beauty about the changing 

day; 
Some little worth in youth and love, some grief at 
their decay ; 
But the world has taught ye better; there's nothing 

now but Gold ! 
Ye worfhip golden idols, no matter what they be. 
Were I well gilded over, ye'd worfhip even me ! 
Forever o'er the ledger, (its missal,) Trade is bent, 
And the age responds, (its sole amen !) " Per cent ! 

per cent I per cent ! " 
Were this all, I would not murmur : Nay ! I do not 
murmur now ; 



204 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

There is something in the cuftom even I myself 

avow ; 
There's a dignity in dollars, and a wisdom hid in gold. 
Which the poor man cannot fathom, howsoever wise 

and bold. 

3- 

Not for this I blame ye, brothers, nor that ye reje6t 

the flowers. 
See no glory in the ftarlight, know no meaning in 

the wind ; 
Not for angels look I, hope I, in a world like this of 

ours ; 
I only afk for men^ but men I cannot find. 
All your actions, public, private, lack a certain manly 

tone ; 
Either ye are arrant cowards, else ye are absurdly 

brave : 
Either to himself, or others, man is more or less a 

flave. 
Not the king and god he fhould be, with his heavenly 

realm and throne. 
In yourselves ye might be royal, might be every 

thing ye would ; 
But for help ye call in others, when the one alone is 

good I 
Firfl: in youth your hearts are tender ; (granite, not 

so hard as mine !) 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 205 

And with melting eyes ye wander, and ye sigh 

your souls away : 
Others answer, 'tis their inftindt ; both your lufty 

arms entwine, 

Both are kissing painted clay ! 
Who would pin his faith on woman, whom the 

lighteft whim can move ? 
There is something half degrading in the very name 

of love ! 
Love yourselves, your dogs, your horses, even the 

cheats of dice and wine ; 
But for women — would your fancies were but half 

as free as mine ! 

4. 
Then ye call in priefts and monarchs, and are fain 

to summon more j . 

But they fhut and bar the door : 

Man within himself is prisoned, and his jailers guard 
the cell. 

Terrible with briftling bayonets, and the keys of 
heaven and hell : 

Hell with all its noxious vapors never spawned such 
deadly twins : 

Priefts and monarchs! ye muft answer all our aggre- 
gated sins ! 

From our weakness and our error, working on our 
love and terror, 



206 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Priefts have fhapen many idols, and are fhaping 

many more : 
Each in his peculiar fafhion elevates some human 

passion, 
Deifies some mortal evil for his fellows to adore. 
Pillared temples, marble ftatues, smoking altars, 

silver fhrines, 

Formed the frame of ancient creeds : 
Moftly, all the moderns keep it, with a score of new 

designs. 

Pictures, crucifixes, beads ! 
And to bind our spirits firmer, working in their 

addled brains, 
Priefts have feigned, or found, and added hell itself 

to their domains. 
'Tis enough to make one merry! Nay! I care not 

for your ban ; 
Good my m afters, hell is only in the wicked heart of 

man : 
The black hearts that have enflaved us, since the 

very world began ! 

5- 
Also you, ye gilded monarchs, in your tinsel robes 

of state. 
Ye are cheats and demons also, worthy our pro- 

foundeft hate ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 20/ 

And ye have it, and my counsel does not end in 

hate alone ; 
Up ! ye nations I kill your tyrants ! level prison, 

palace, throne ! 
Yet I know not, nor advise ye. Why ftiould ye 
again be free ? 
Vassals ! even v^hen ye are so, ye are soon enflaved 
again : 
Slavery has made ye heedful ; use has made your 
fetters needful ; 
Let them be ! 
Think v^hat bayonets oppose ye ; think what thou- 
sands muft be flain ; 
Think of Liberty's disafters ; think of grim Religion's 

key, 
Then, go supplicate your maflers, soul and body on 
its knee. 

Slaves again ! 
Slaves, I hate ye! hew your wood, and draw your 
water ; 

'Tis the best for dogs like you ; 
Beasts of burden! bear your burdens, march to 

flaughter ! 
Hecatombs, the earth demands it! Blood! it fattens 
her like dew ! 

6. 
Up ! be merry ! never think ! Eat and drink ! eat 
and drink! 



208 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

In the hell of this existence make whatever heaven 
ye can : 

Clink your glasses, toast your lasses, 
Be no longer God, but man ! 
Clink your glasses, toast your lasses, set the table in 

a roar! 
There's a vacant chair beside ye ; there's a fliadow 
on the floor. 

And a knocking at the door ! 
Shout and drown it ! 'tis but fancy j merry till your 
dying breath ; 

Merry in the teeth of Death ! 
Talk no longer of repentance ; once indeed — but 

all is past : 
Good or evil, 'tis no matter : we fhall all be damned 
at last ! 

VII. 

I. 
Peace, wild dreamer ! cease this raving ! 'tis a mad- 
ness in the brain ; 
Even were it true, why say it ? What will be the 
end, the gain ? 

Waves may murmur, thunders roll. 
Silence is the only answer of a self-colle6ted soul. 
Though I fall, in darkness groping, I fhall yet behold 
the light ; 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 209 

There are many gaping ruins in the temple of my 

heart ; 
But the holy light will enter like the tempeft and the 

night, 
Beating on me, as I wander in the corridors apart ! 
In my youth I thought to perifh : youth has gone, 

and I remain ; 
Some great fhock will fall upon me, and will make 

me calm again : 
Nay, my calmness is returning: torture has not 

wrung in vain. 
Beauty ftirs again my nature, not in suns and moons 

alone, 
But in thoughts that breathe repentance, and in 

a6tions that atone : 
Nature folds me to her bosom, in her unity enfhrined, 
Like a fhell within the ocean, or a thought within 

the mind. 
Even Love, the dream, remaineth ; wears a kind of 

hopeful smile : 
I've no faith in his fulfilment, but he may remain 

awhile ! 

2. 
And mine the Paradise of books, the heaven of 

classic lore ; 
The dreams of sage philosophers, the songs of bards 

of yore : 

14 



210 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

I brood upon their pages, and pen my own sweet 

books, 
Nor pine, for that is over, for woman's loving looks ! 
Sometimes a tone of music, an old familiar ftrain 
Reminds me of my feelings, recalls my former pain : 
Something about the organ, a fhrill yet muffled tone, 
A rich melodious fretfulness, a snarling silver moan : 
But I rarely heed its sorrow, I know its syren charms ; 
Nor need I liften to it, for in my liftening brain 
Is many a richer ftrain. 
Lays to bury Youth to, or rouse the world in arms ! 
So armed with calm endurance I frame my glowing 

lays, 
Embalmifig in forgetfulness the burden of my days ! 

3- 

And when the days are ended, and come the dulky 

nights. 
Glimmering in my chamber, I let my fancy roam ; 
Watching from the window the twinkling city lights. 

The people going home ! 
I cross my neighbor's threfhold, and softly mount 
the ftairs. 
But for all my ftealthy creeping, no ftep of mine 
is missed ; 
For the wifely face surprises me, like a vision, un- 
awares. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 211 

And the little ones run to me, to be taken up and 
kissed ! 
The dear old feelings waken, the sad old times 
return 5 
Perchance I flied a tear or two, or heave a ftifled 
sigh : 
But the cheerful merry lamp comes in, the merry 
fagots burn. 

And I put the darkness by ! 

4- 
Then come the long and dreamy nights, the hours 

of classic ease ; 
What honey-throated Plato says, and what Maeonides ; 
The songs I sing, the books I pen, the thought I 

undergo ; 
That sweet laborious idleness that poets only know ! 
I keep the watches of the night, the deeper hours of 

morn. 
Till o'er the silent sea of fleep my spirit's bark is 

borne ! 
Save when the melancholy wind is moaning in the 

ftreet. 
When falls the rain upon the roof, when drives the 

Icy fleet; 
Or when the mournful midnight bell awakes its 

funeral toll, 



212 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

And fhakes the air, as o'er its waves the iron echoes 

roll ; 
Then ftare I on the dying lamp, the embers on the 

hearth. 
The thickening gloom, the empty room, and grow 

alone on earth j 
Then turn I in my reftless bed, and feel upon my 

breaft 
A weight like lead, and not the head, the heart that 

there fliould reft ! 
And in my dreams I seem to drift along a barren 

land. 
Where ftrikes the moon on ruined walls, where 

muffled figures ftand : 
The waves are laid, the winds are ftill, yet over all 

the fhore 
There haunts a voice, there broods a ftiape, the 

awful Nevermore ! 

VIII. 

I. 

Nevermore ? The dream was idle ! Even flumber 

can deceive. 
If it meant not, (ftill deceiving!) that I nevermore 

can grieve : 
But perchance I heard it wrongly, as I drifted from 

the fhore -, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 21 3 

'Twas not Never ^otAj Ever — only Ever^ Evermore! 
With your hand in mine, I think so ; from your 

kisses, dear, I know it j 
Sleeping in your fond embraces will assure, and 

set the seal : 
If there be a deeper knowledge, I am willing to 

forego it, 
Deeper raptures, I renounce them, so divine are 

those I feel ! 

2. 
Every moment of exigence since we met comes up 

before mej 
Waves of dim remembered feeling, seas of memory 

sweeping o'er me : 
By the sea, as now, my darling! by the very sea 

that lies 
Pallid in the moonlight yonder, with the bonder in 

its eyes ; 
In this very bridal chamber did we lift, as now, the 

veil. 
And reveal our inmoft natures, both so beautiful and 

pale ! 
When I said " my youth is wafted," when I moaned 

" my manhood dies ! " 
When I wept " I love you, lady ! " and awaited your 

replies. 
You but clutched my hand the closer, you but seized 

me by the arm, 



214 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

As if you would pull me to you, or would hurry me 
from harm : 

(Were you thinking of the ocean ? were you tramp- 
ing in the sand ?) 

But I underftood the gefture, my heart clenched you 
like a hand ; 

Clenched you with a hand of iron, either to possess 
you there. 

Or to plunge you in the ocean of its old and new 
despair ! 

Then I rose and paced the chamber, scarcely know- 
ing where I trod. 
Very daring in my curses, very humble in my 
prayers ; 

Nov/ a demon, now a god, ' 

And you paced with like emotion in my footfteps 
unawares ! 

3- 

Paft the night in troubled visions, came the morn, 

but came as calm 
As the Sabbath days in Eden, and we walked 
along the fhore ; 
Silent where the solemn ocean poured his everlafting 
psalm. 

But our spirits talked the more ! 
And at noon in summer quiet at your feet I read my 
songs, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 215 

Trailing in my hand your tresses, which were 
dearer songs to me ; 
And you praised me, gave me, sweetefl:, what to 
Poesy belongs — 

Kisses, v/here the crown fliould be ! 
Now my nature fell before you, in proftration new 

and sweet. 
Kissed the hem of your white garment, and your 

spirit's whiter feet ; 
Then rose up like one in frenzy, in the fever-throbs 

of pain. 
And devoured you with its glances, in a passionate 

disdain ! 
Love ? and wherefore ? what the end ? Hands may 
meet, and thoughts may blend, 
But our lives are separated : there's a yawning 
gulf between ; 
Yet I know not, youth is flying : you are wafting, 
I am dying; 

Loving, what fhould intervene ? 
Lay your head upon my bosom, where a falling kiss 
may find it ; 
Knit your fingers now in mine, love, and in 
silentness remain ; 

If I suffer, never mind it. 
Be you happy, fool your fancy ; we can both be 
wise again ! 



2l6 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Now^ the only wisdom's loving; parting now the 

only pain ! 
Lift your face, and let me kiss it, from your brow 
and cheek so pale, 
Wandering to your mouth, beloved, where I hang 
with ftifled breath ; 
Draining all its hoard of sweetness, till in utter bliss 
I fail. 

Dropping from you, nigh to Death ! 

4- 

But that morning when we parted — ah! what agony 

and pain ! 
Worlds on worlds would never tempt me to be 

tortured so again ! 
Still within this very chamber, where yon window 

clips the moon, 
(But the (ky was bright with sunlight, and the air 

was warm with June!) 
There we flood that fatal morning, with such horrid 

aches of heart. 
Bent on parting, but unwilling, nay, unable, love, 

to part, 
Till I tore you from my bosom, flung you off, I know 

not where, 
Rufhing in the mocking sunlight, and the cursed, 

cursed air, 



50NGS OF SUMMER. 21 J 

Where my tortures seemed to rise, 

Growing from my heart in mountains till they over- 
topped the fkies ! 

Then the dull reaction followed, settling on my 
barren brain. 

Like a dreary day in autumn on a weary wafte of 
plain : 

Every thing was fhrouded to me : Joy herself, on 
such a day, 

Muft have come to me like Sorrow, in her livery of 
gray! 

5- 

What will now become of me ? You are yonder by 
the sea 
Pining, (are you not, beloved?) I am in the sea 
of men ; 
You have friends, a ftately birth : I am all alone on 
earth ; 
Leagues, and poverty between us, will you think 
of me again ? 
Everywhere, in Art and Nature, you diffuse your soul 
around ; 
In the books I read no longer, blurring all the 
mifty lines \ 
In the heavenly sea of music freighted with a richer 
sound ; 
In the sunlight, in the moonlight, and in every 
ftar that fhines : 



21 8 SONGS OF SUMMER, 

And when midnight tempefts gather I behold you 
in the gloom, 
Rufhing through the fiery darkness, in a cloud of 
whiteft light ; 
And mine arms ftrike out like lightnings, to embrace 
you, and consume. 

But I only grasp the night ! 
Yet methlnks, such links have bound you, and so 

far my passion flies. 
You mujl: feel my arms around you, and muji see my 
burning eyes ! 

6. 
Yes, and when, as now, the moonlight through the 
snowy curtain falls, 
Creeps upon the tufted carpet in a diamond flab 
of panes, 
Sleeps amid the lilac ihadows waving on the dreamy 
walls. 

Still my soul with you remains ! 
Bends above you as you flumber in your chafliity 
apart. 
Smooths the tresses from your forehead, lifts the 
cross from off your breaft. 

And lies down upon your heart. 
In a perfe6l, perfe61: reft ! 
Else within my little chamber, in a dream, I see you 
ft and, 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 219 

With a rose-bud in your bosom, and a lily in your 

hand j 
Gliding to my warm embraces, in my loving breaft 

you creep, 
Till I wake, and find you vanifhed in the Paradise 

of Sleep ! 

Sleeping, you rejoin me soon : 
oWe are dead, are spirits only ; climb the viewless 

rounds of air ; 
Full to heaven your brow is lifted, like the crescent 

of the moon, 
While your eyes are yearning earthward through the 

fhadows of your hair ! 
And you kiss my tearful eyelids as we climb the 

ftarry deep, 
For I fall in utter sorrow, dear one, on your neck, 

and weep I 

7. 
Oh! what letters passed between us, and what 

subtle thrills they woke ! 
Had we not fulfilled them wholly, why, our very 

hearts had broke ! 
For myself, they were my being, and to-night I had 

not been. 
Save but for your letters, sweeteft, and the sweeteft 

love therein ! 
Kisses on the superscription, fingers trembling in the 

seal, 



220 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Broken with the hafte of passion, and with pas- 
sion's secret fear ; 
Even the simple writing thrilled me, made my 

dazzled senses reel. 
While I flowly wrung its meaning, never at the 

moment clear : 
Hanging on the lighteft phrases, as a lover only can, 
Sounding all the deeps of feeling, I grew more and 

more a man ! 
Daily, hourly to the eaftward, to the margin of the 

sea. 
Did I breathe divineft kisses, did I send my soul to 

, thee ; 
And my kisses met their sillers, your dear kisses, 

everywhere. 
Nay, myself, I seemed to meet them, felt your warm 

lips pursed in air ! 

8. 
But that night, can I forget it ? that delicious night 
in spring, 
When we pledged our hands, so hopeless, where 

our hearts were pledged before. 
When we gave ourselves, undaunted, to each 
other, evermore. 
Into Love's serene dominions soaring as with angel 
wing ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 221 

Not for us the shade and silence the betrothal hour 
demands ; 
Round us buzzed the idle talkers, o'er us blazed 
the chandeliers ; 
There was nothing to the seeming in our interchange 
of hands, 
But it cancelled all the sorrow of our separated 
years ! 
Flushed with passion and ambition, when I left you 
there alone, 
Through the silent city moving, in the fleeping 
ftreets apart, 
Reddeft: roses bloomed before me, over me the 
morning shone, 
Marching to the ftately music of my own tri- 
umphant heart : 

Splendors on my brow and face, 
Heaven itself rose up before me, as the great world 
dipped in space ! 

9- 
Then our hours of ftolen sweetness, with their 

maddening incompleteness ; 

Both so loath and yet so eager, souls of mingled 

snow and fire ; 

Each its cup of passion filling, then in duft the neilar 

spilling. 



222 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Though a burning thirft consumed us, and a fever 
of desire ! 
Often in my little chamber at your feet I knelt in 
prayer, 
With my clasped hands imploring, till you raised 
me from your feet ; 
Then I hid within your bosom, and unlooped your 
falling hair. 
While your arms were locked around me, till I 
felt their pulses beat ! 
With a kiss upon my eyelids, and a mift within my 
eyes. 
Fixed on yours in fteeping passion, I returned 
your sweet embrace ; 
And my heart leaped up within me in a sudden ftorm 
of sighs. 
And I poured a rain of kisses on your brow, and 
eyes, and face ! 
Then, your white throat in my fingers, and a tingling 

in their tips. 
Wild with love I faftened on you, and I grew around 

your lips ; 
Every atom of my body felt the hunger of my heart, 
I was mad to crush, and kill you, and to tear your 
limbs apart! 

10. 
But all this, the joy and glory of my glad exulting 
spirit. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 223 

Was as nothing to the morning when we flood so 

meek and grand, 

In the chapel, hand In hand, 
Each the vaft "/ wzV//" responding where the 

blessed God might hear it ! 
Nor was that, although it raised us to the very gates 

of light, 
Half so lofty, and so holy, as our wedded love to 

night ; 
Sitting in the happy silence, with our hands together 

preft, 
I caress you, wife, and bless you, as you lie upon my 

breaft ; 
Dreaming in our bridal chamber, in the sainted moon 

afleep. 
With the starry spaces o'er us, and before the listen- 
ing deep. 

Till we turn to God above. 
And demand a benedicSlIon — "Father! love us, 

FOR WE LOVE ! " 

1853- 



224 SONGS OF SUMMER. 



> 

I LAY his picture on my knee, 
The knee he loves to sit upon ; 
It is the image of my son, 

And, like the child, a world to me. 

He fronts me in a little chair. 

In careless ease, and quiet grace, 
A courtly deference in his face, 

A glory in his shining hair : 

An infant prince, a baby king, 
To whom his minifters relate 
Some intricate affair of state : 

He hears, and weighs the smalleft thing. 

Not twice has summer come and gone 
Since he was born, a summer-child ; 
Two Junes have on his cradle smiled, 

A rose of June without a thorn. 



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SONGS OF SUMMER. 22 5 

I flood beside his mother's bed 

When he was born, at dead of night ; 
My heart grew faint with its dehght ; 

I heard his cry : he was not dead ! 

And flie, his mother, dearer far 

Than this poor life of mine can be, 
She hves : fhe weeps : fhe clings to me. 

Her dim eye brightening like a ftar ! 

We heard his low uncertain moan ; 
In both our souls it smote a chord 
Not reached by Love's divineft word ; 

It ftirred, and ftirs to him alone. 

'* W^e have a child ! " We smiled and wept ; 
He flept : God's Angel in the dark 
Pufhed down the ftream his little bark. 

And with it ours : with him we flept. 

At lafl the lingering summer passed ; 
The summer passed, the autumn came, 
The dying woods were all a-flame. 

The leaves were whirling in the blaft : 

He lived; our loving spirits wore 
A royal diadem of joy \ 
15 



226 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

Time laid his hands upon the boy, 
And day by day he ripened more. 

His dreamy eye grew hke the fky, 
A hquid blue, half dark, half bright ; 
Now like the noon, and now like night, 

With silver planets sown on high : 

His thin white ringlets turn to gold. 
And glearn like suns on autumn eves ; 
Or hke the sober autumn fheaves. 

Whose jftrawy fires are faint and cold. 

His noble brow, his placid look. 

The subtle sweetness of his smile — 
They touch, but fly my simple ftyle ; 

The child is like a Poet's book : 

A rare conception, richly planned ; 
Harmonious, perfe61: in its parts : 
Going ftralght home to all men's hearts. 

An easy thing to underftand ! 

Sweet wife ! we underftand the child ; 
We know that he is fair and good : 
As good as fair : no vice of blood 

To mar him : neither weak, nor wild. 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 227 

I take his pi6ture from my knee. 

And press it to my lips again : 

I see an hundred in my brain, 
And all of him, and dear to me. 

He neflles in his nurse's arms, 

His young eyes winking in the light : 
I hear his sudden fhriek at night, 

Startled in dreams by vague alarms ; 

We walk the floor, and hufh his moan ; 

Again he fleeps : we kiss his brow. 

I toss him on my fhoulder now. 
His Majefty is on the throne ! 

His kingly clutch is in my hair ; 

He sees a rival in the glass : 

It ftares, and passes as we pass ; 
It fades. I breathe the country air : 

I see a cottage leagues from here ; 
A garden near ; some orchard trees : 
A leafy glimpse of creeping seas ; 

And in the cottage something dear : 

A square of sunlight on the floor. 

Blocked from the window ^ in the square 



228 SONGS OF SUMMER. 

A happy child with heavenly hair, 
To whom the world is more and more. 

He sees the blue fly beat the pane, 
Buzzing away the noon-tide hours ; 
The terrace grass, the scattered flowers. 

The beetles, and the beads of rain : 

He sees the gravelled walk below, 

The narrow arbor draped with vines ; 
The light that like an emerald fhines. 

The small bird hopping to and fro. 

He drinks their linked beauty in ; 

They fill his thought with silent joy : 
But now he spies a late-dropped toy, 

And all his noisy pranks begin. 

They bear him to an upper room. 

When comes the eve ; he hums for me. 
Like some voluptuous drowsy bee. 

That fhuts his wings in honied gloom. 

I see a fhadow in a chair ; 

I see a fhadowy cradle go ; 

I hear a ditty, soft and low : 
The mother and the child are there ! 



SONGS OF SUMMER. 229 

At length the balm of fleep is flied ; 
One bed contains my bud and flower : 
They fleep, and dream, and hour by hour 

Goes by, while angels watch the bed. 

Sleep on, and dream, ye blessed pair ! 

My prayers fhall guard ye night and day j 
Ye guard me so, ye make me pray : 

Ye make my happy life a prayer ! 

Dream on ! dream on ! and in your dreams 
Remember me ; I love ye well : 
I love ye more than tongue can tell, 

Dear Souls ! and ere the morning beams 

My soul fhall fl:rike your trail of fleep, 

In some enchanted, holy place. 

And fold ye in a fond embrace, 
And kiss ye till with bhss 1 weep ! 

1856. 



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